


Just Like Honey

by KiraNightshade44



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Ben is adopted, Daddy Kink, Dominant Kylo Ren, Enthusiastic Consent, Experienced Kylo Ren, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Family Drama, Filthy, Oral Fixation, POV Rey, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Pseudo-Incest, Rey is 19 before they have sex, Smutty goodness, Some fluff for ya'll, Song Porn, Submissive Rey, Tagged Underage just in case for the sexual situations that arise when she is 17, Virgin Rey, canon age gap, hipsters in love, time jumps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:07:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 13
Words: 84,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26707216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiraNightshade44/pseuds/KiraNightshade44
Summary: Rey closes her eyes, cringing at her own indiscretion even though no one can possibly see her from up in her bedroom. This - infatuation - is not good. Rey knows this, but she just turned nineteen two months ago and she’s never had a boyfriend, so she doesn’t know how to handle this heady concoction of lust and self-loathing. There is just something about this man, who is eight years her senior and definitely out of her league, that she can’t get out of her head.And the fact that this man is Ben Organa, the adopted son of Leia Organa, and the adopted nephew to Luke Organa, makes it all that much worse.He’s her cousin but she can’t stop staring at all the bared skin.***Complete <3
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 135
Kudos: 287





	1. Half Awake in our Fake Empire

**Author's Note:**

> So, as with We, The Childen of the Night, this story was posted before and then deleted when I had a passion of self-doubt. I am still not sure how great this story is, but regardless, I hope you enjoy this porn trash-heap. 
> 
> Please note the tags - There is pseudo-incest in this story (Ben and Rey are cousins, but Ben is adopted). There is also strong Daddy Kink - so please be aware. I don't want to squick anyone at any time - Rey enthusiastically consents to everything in this story - but there is a huge Dom/Sub play between our two main characters. It is not something I have ever written before, and my intention is to portray this as a balanced relationship. Time jumps will be clearly noted. 
> 
> I have also changed some elements of this story, more so toward the end. This story is almost complete and I will post updates regularly. 
> 
> Happy reading!!! <3

She is thirteen in this memory.

The sky is clear of clouds, a flawless, pale blue that is analogous with southern California. Palm trees dapple the freeway, and seagulls circle overhead before swooping towards the beaches where the leavings are more plentiful. 

She is wearing a pretty blue dress covered in sequins and a pair of white flats that will assuredly give her blisters by the end of the day. The fact that she did not pick out either of these articles of clothing has left her in a high state of irritation all morning, no matter how nice it was that Aunt Leia paid for everything. It’s not that her father does not have money to pay for her dress or anything else she might need or desire. Luke Organa, just like every other Organa before him, is a general surgeon for the local hospital, so they are not lacking in funds by any means. It’s just that Luke would have no idea where to start when it comes to shopping for a teenage girl’s graduation and with all the late shifts he’s been pulling…

He's not home much. Or ever, really. 

So Leia had taken charge of the Graduation Committee, and in true form, picked out a dress that is both uncomfortable and something that she might have worn when she was six years old. With the puffy blue satin and sparkling sequins, she is one fairy godmother away from being taken to her school in a pumpkin carriage rather than in what her aunt fondly dubs as her son’s “mobile death trap”.

Happily nestled in said death trap, she closes her eyes as the tiny hairs around her face shift in the air. The AC is blasting, effectively keeping out that sticky California humidity and the radio is cranking out  _ The Who _ . One their biggest hits. She pretends she’s not bopping her feet to the tune, singing along under breath about being out here in the fields, where she fights for her meals.  _ The Who _ are not exactly cool by the standards of her thirteen-year-old tastes, but she secretly likes them anyway. 

What’s more important, though, is that she can hear the song clearly and loudly. She can feel the full blast of the AC and she has all the legroom in the world. Today might be her middle school graduation, but she has passed a far more important milestone, by her estimation. She has graduated from the realm of childhood and discomfort into the fabled realm of Adulthood - with a capital A, like the next chapter in a book.

Ben has finally let her sit in the front seat of his black 1966 Mustang.

The car is not actually named “the mobile death trap” of course. Rather, it is The Falcon and it was Ben’s sole inheritance from his father before the old man passed away from a pulmonary embolism at the ripe age of forty-seven. Ben never saw much of his father before he passed away, but he loves his car, almost more than anything else in the world. 

Well, not more than _ her _ , of course. There is really  _ nothing _ or  _ anyone _ Ben loves more than her and they both know this with a quiet serenity that they never really speak of. It just is, like the hazel of her eyes and the black of his hair.

“I still don’t get why I have to wear this. They aren’t even coming today.” She might be whining. Maybe a little. But she is also right. The “they” in that sentence goes unsaid because there are really only two “theys” in their lives. Leia and Luke are gainfully employed in the fast-moving world of health care, and can barely make time for anything else, including each of their respective children. 

This is also not something that needs to be said between them. 

“So?” Ben says through the cigarette clamped between his white and slightly imperfect teeth, using one hand to steer and the other to light his cancer stick. If Aunt Leia or her father knew he was smoking with her in the car, they would both have an aneurism. 

Still, he made more of an effort than they did. He has a grey dress shirt on with a black tie. His black jeans are ripped, and his Converse scuffed up from years of mileage. This is about the closest she has ever seen him to dressed-up. Like ever. 

“So, it’s kind of pointless.” She crosses her arms in front of her and stares glumly out the window.

“You only graduate eighth grade once, kid. Just think about it, in a few years you’ll be in art school in New York City, or somewhere kitschy like that, while the rest of us are stuck in our stuffy offices, dealing with crying babies and sick old people.”

There is a faint bitterness to his words then. A faint sadness that gives her pause.

“I won’t move away. I want to go to art school here.” What she doesn’t say is that she never wants to live anywhere he isn’t but that seems like the kind of pukey talk she reads in her tween romance novels that she hides under her mattress, so she doesn’t say it. 

She sure thinks it, though.

“Well, anyway,” Ben carries on, his voice clearing of whatever black emotion tainted it before, “my mother bought you the dress, so all you have to do is show up and accept your certificate.”

He says this like he’s a great sage on the subject. She happens to know for a fact that he skipped out on all his graduations, except his Bachelors, which Aunt Leia made him attend so she could finally get a grad pic of him.

“Can you put that out? It’s gross.”

The front seat is a plume of cigarette smoke and the vague scent of Ben’s cologne. The latter she likes; he always smells like rain and mint, and something softer, something that is just him. Ben sighs and opens his window to toss the cigarette out, only half-smoked.

“Um! Litterbug much?” she exclaims, scandalized.

He throws her a crooked grin, his eyes hidden behind a black pair of aviators that she absolutely does not find him disgustingly handsome in. Lately, these strange musings on her cousin’s attractiveness have grown more frequent, but she does not think much about it. His handsomeness, much like their close relationship, is just a fact of life and not something she dwells on. For the most part. His hands dwarf the steering wheel, as usual. Everything about him is large, from his tall frame, down to his long limbs that he can barely fold to fit in the car. 

The engine revs as he presses the gas, making her squeak when he speeds up to get on the highway.

“Oh, quit your whining. We both know you love it,” he quips, grinning his cocky grin when he easily scoots past a transport truck and zips into the passing lane like they’re driving in NASCAR.

She harrumphs… But he’s right. She does love it. He always gives Aunt Leia and her father a heart attack when they’re in the car with him, but she loves how fast he drives.

“You should quit smoking, you know. For real this time.” She’s putting on her best lecturing tone, something learned from her father. He’s not home often enough anymore to use it on her much. His work keeps him busy. “You’d think now that you go to med school that you would cut that out. You know - because you’re studying to become a doctor.”

“You’re such a shit." Ben smirks at her affronted look.

“You love it,” she dishes back at him, throwing him a falsely sweet smile.

He laughs outright at that and they descend into a comfortable silence.

After a while, he changes the music to something more his speed.  _ The National _ comes on, and of course, she knows this song too. She and Ben drive around in his car a lot when he’s not cramming for exams and she’s not hanging out with her middle school friends. It’s not as often as before, but they still go out once a week at least.

“Why don’t you want to go?” Ben says after the song ends.

Their exit is coming up soon and then they’ll be at her school, sitting outside in the stifling heat for hours, waiting for her to walk across the stage. 

She thinks about her mother, whom she can barely remember with any clarity anymore. She thinks about how her father could not get one day off work, not one, to attend his daughter’s graduation. She thinks about all the people that will be there that she doesn’t really care about seeing, and that the only person she really wants to hang out with today and lug through her stormy mood is her cousin, who is sitting in the driver’s seat next to her. After summer, she’ll be in the unknown land of High School and her cousin will be back to his bio-med labs, and they won’t get to see each other as often.

This last thought, more than any of the others, makes her the saddest.

“Why didn’t you?” she asks, genuinely curious.

Ben’s quiet for a moment and when they get to the exit, he doesn’t switch lanes. They stay in the left lane, blowing past the exit and leaving her stomach somewhere back there too, in all her shock. She stares at him, but he’s not looking at her.

“Do you wanna go to the ocean, or keep driving?” he asks, his deep voice rumbling.

She stares and stares, and then, a slow delighted grin stretches across her face. She leans back in her seat, kicking off her flats and looking out at that open road.

“Let’s keep going.”

Without a word, Ben reaches for the volume dial and cranks up the music, a soft wistful smile turning his lips up. Now it’s  _ Fake Empire _ coming on, their favourite song, and soon they’re singing together, as she drums the beat into the dashboard and his deep voice rumbles through the lyrics, melodic and in almost perfect imitation of Matt Berninger.

This is her favourite memory.

*

Rhylen Organa, or Rey as her friends and family call her, has a problem. It’s probably not a big problem - or at least not as big as she’s making it - but it’s a problem, nonetheless. About thirty minutes ago, she heard the telltale rumble of The Falcon parking in their driveway. And about twenty minutes after that, she could hear two male voices from the backyard below.

Rey peers between the blinds of her bedroom window, trying and failing to dispel a surge of teenage hormones that just won’t seem to quit as of late. Her bikini is balled into one hand, utterly forgotten as she stands half-dressed before the window, staring down at the backyard.

On the deck below are two men.

One is young, shirtless, and built like a redwood. The other is much older, short and a little chubby in the belly. The older man is gesturing boisterously, no doubt in the middle of a harrowing tale of the Emergency Room at St. Peter’s Hospital, in downtown Orange County. The older man is also her father - Luke Organa. Rey hears about the epic saga that is the ER a lot. Her father loves to hear himself talk and she mostly doesn’t mind indulging him, the little that she gets to see him that is. The back deck is the same orangey cedar that her father stained it when she was still in diapers, back when her mother was still alive. Next to it, their pool glitters under the hot July sun and the tasteful yew hedges line the back fence in a fifteen feet high enclosure, so none of their nosy neighbours can peep into their backyard. Her father craves privacy to the point of paranoia.

Rey can’t say she blames him. Her neighbours are super nosy.

_ Wolf Alice _ plays softly from her laptop but Rey is not really listening to Ellen Roswell sing about cursing the things that made her sad for so long. Rey is not paying attention to the hedges, or the glistening pool either. She’s definitely not paying attention to her father, as he gestures wildly with his BBQ tongs like they’re a laser sword, and he carelessly spills his beer all over his beloved deck.

No. Rey is staring down at the tall, young man standing next to her father. His skin is pale; alabaster and creamy, save for the scatterings of beauty marks and moles across his body. He looks nothing like her father, nor his own mother for that matter (who, incidentally, is at the spa today for yet another round of Botox injections). He looks like no one in the family, though most of them are dead and gone, anyway.

Rey cannot help but stare at the hard pads of the young man’s pecs and the faint yet discernible ridges of his abs. He has always been fit, but in the last two years, he has gotten built to the point that he seems like a giant next to the other members of their family. He’s a good foot taller than her dad. When he laughs at something her father says, she worries at her bottom lip, tracking the new lines that emerge on his face with the raptness of a cheetah staring down an unsuspecting gazelle.

Maybe, it’s because she never gets to see him anymore. Maybe she is defective because she has never really been interested in anyone else the way she is in him.

And before she knows it, her thighs are rubbing together in her cool, air-conditioned bedroom.

Rey closes her eyes, cringing at her own indiscretion even though no one can possibly see her from up in her bedroom. This -  _ infatuation _ \- is not good. Rey knows this, but she just turned nineteen two months ago and she’s never had a boyfriend, so she doesn’t know how to handle this heady concoction of lust and self-loathing. There is just something about this man, who is eight years her senior and definitely out of her league, that she can’t get out of her head.

And the fact that this man is Ben Organa, the adopted  _ son _ of Leia Organa, and the adopted  _ nephew _ to Luke Organa, makes it all that much worse.

He’s her  _ cousin _ but she can’t stop staring at all the bared skin.

*

Rey mopes her way downstairs in her grey cover-up, relegated to the fact that she’s going to have to put her brave face on at some point and go outside.

Ben rarely visits anymore. There are no more drives in The Falcon, no more belting out the lyrics to songs like  _ Half Light II _ or  _ Ready to Start _ , no more dashboard confessionals where she complains about the kids she doesn’t like at school and he bemoans his coursework, or the fact that his mother is remarrying for the umpteenth. Ben is done school now, but his residency has kept him busy enough. It’s been weeks since she’s seen him last and no matter her - feelings - she misses him.

_ Do I really think he stays away because of work? Because if I do, I’m an even bigger idiot than I thought,  _ Rey thinks to herself. She knows why he stays away, but she will not let herself dwell on those memories right now. Not when he’s right outside and she’s about to cross the threshold and see him for the first time in weeks. 

Her bare feet pad across the familiar tiles of her kitchen and she can already hear awful 80s music from the Bose speakers outside. Something that is likely either Bruce Springsteen or Bon Jovi. Her beach towel is folded over her arm and she’s halfway across the kitchen to the patio door when she slows to a halt.

Ben is out there. Ben - the subject of her most secret and lurid fantasies. Ben - who is an adult, who is eight years older than her, who is most likely dating a supermodel, or someone like that. Someone far prettier and adult and - most importantly friends and neighbours - not his nineteen-year-old cousin.

He’s seen her puke, for God’s sake. It was only five years ago when he picked her up from camp (one of many, many times) and she got carsick all over his brand new upholstery in The Falcon like a scene out of The Exorcist, up-chucking all over the backseat, herself and that new shiny interior leather. But he didn’t get mad at her.

He never does, really.

Ben has watched countless animated movies with her over the years and she happens to know he hates every single one, but he did it anyway. He held her after Bambi’s mother died and she couldn’t stop sobbing, and he organized a  _ Disney _ princess-themed birthday party for her when she was nine. After her mother passed away, Ben came to live with her and her father for a while, to help take care of her. During that time, she had a brief stint of wetting the bed and rather than yelling at her like her father had done on a few occasions, Ben had sat on the lid of the toilet seat and gravely held her hand, as always with that ever somber expression on his face while she cried in the shower because of how mortified she had been.

Ben always seemed to understand her in a way her father never could. It helped that her cousin was young. Rey was a “happy accident” as her father liked to tell her and everyone else willing to listen to his embarrassing family stories. Luke and her mother, Katherine, were older when they had her. This meant that Ben, who was much closer in age to her than anyone else in the family, was often enlisted as Luke’s liaison when he could not get through to his daughter.

He is still the Ben who drove her around in his car and blasted music as they sang along (her - completely out of key, and him - surprisingly well) but somewhere along the way, he has become more to her. Something in the darkened land of sexual fantasies and strange, conflicting emotions she can’t decipher any more than if her thoughts about him were written in Latin.

Rey isn’t stupid. She knows exactly  _ when  _ it happened. She has it down to the date, to the fucking  _ minute _ and it is all her fault. She knows these feelings - these  _ urges  _ \- are wrong. Are sick, even. But she can’t stop these strange musings - musings like how much hotter Ben is than anyone at school, musings about what it might be like to hold his hand and go on dates with him - no more than she can force herself not to breathe air.

But now it’s time to put those emotions away, back into the dark box in her mind from which they crawled from, and get outside. Her father will wonder where she is and sooner or later she has to do this. To face Ben. And she will. She  _ can _ do this. 

“I can do this,” Rey says to herself in the gloomy kitchen.

All the curtains are closed to keep out the hot summer sun and she can’t help the way her stomach swoops when she forces herself to make the long walk to the patio door. Her hand closes over the cold handle and then she is pulling the door open to the bright July sun and the scent of propane.

It’s scorching hot outside. Her dad is in one of his Hawaiian shirts and a pair of red board shorts. His hair is almost completely grey now, though back in the day he was blonde. Rey inherited her mother’s hair; silky, straight, and brown. Luke stands over the BBQ, like a minister at a pulpit, a pair of tongs in one hand and a Budweiser in the other, none the wiser that his daughter is harboring wildly inappropriate feelings for her adopted cousin, who stands not five feet away. 

Her gaze skitters to Ben, but she finds that he is already looking at her. Or - more accurately - down somewhere at her stomach. She fidgets on the spot, her breath catching the way his eyes linger on her bikini strings and on the golden skin of her thighs and bare tummy, and she wonders if it  _ might  _ be possible that he -

“Jeez, Rey. Can you close the door? We’re not paying to air condition outside you know.”

Rey turns beet red and closes the door so quickly, it slams with a loud bang that rattles the glass. Her father purses his lips and turns back to the BBQ, where baked potatoes and steak are roasting away.

Then she meets Ben’s gaze.

He smiles at her, and it’s a little awkward and stilted, like he does not quite know how to perform that function in her presence anymore, but it’s still him. His brown eyes warm to a shade of liquid honey that does strange and terrible things to her stomach as she does her best to smile back at him.

“Hi, Rey.” He’s still just wearing a pair of black swim trunks and he seems that much larger to her in person. It’s just because she hasn’t seen him in a while. That’s all it is.

She makes sure not to let her gaze linger too long.

“Hey, Ben.” Rey is inwardly impressed she managed to say that without sounding like a complete moron. A part of her wishes it could be like before when they were best friends and it was the two of them against the world. She supposes growing up got in the way of all that, though. Yes, growing up and that night, two years ago, too. And before that night, there was that day around Christmas, with the ornament and…

Rey is first to break eye contact. She skirts around her cousin and dad, ensuring there is a large bubble of distance between herself and the subject of her erstwhile thoughts, lest he somehow picks up on them in the air molecules between them. 

She has her towel over her arm, and she moves towards the pool, grabbing a bottle of sun lotion off the patio table on her way. She’ll just let her dad and cousin talk. She doesn’t want to ruin this rare visit with Ben by stuttering and looking like a fool around her hot - around her  _ cousin _ . She never gets to see him much anymore and she genuinely misses him, even if that feeling is at great odds with all the other things floating around in her head about him.

“How’s the residency going?” Luke ventures, completely oblivious to the awkward tension between his daughter and nephew.

The steaks sizzle on the grill and the scent of cooking meat makes Rey’s tummy growl. She flinches, entirely self-conscious of the sound, but Ben is looking nowhere near her. He’s standing near Luke, opening a fresh beer and blowing out an exasperated breath.

“Oh, it’s fucking crazy as usual. Daniel does dick all, so the rest of us have to pick up the slack.” 

Their family has a pretty laissez-faire policy about swearing. The rule, as her father always tells her, is to know when it is appropriate to swear. School? Not so much. Church? Well, they never go anyways, but that is a definite no-no. When you stub your toe? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Rey doesn’t really swear though. She’s not prim, necessarily, just awkward with timing. At least, that’s what her asshole friend Poe always tells her.

But then Ben is tilting back his beer bottle and Rey is no longer thinking about swearing. Her eyes linger on the way the muscles in his shoulders and upper back bunch with his movements before hastily looking away.

“Yeah, Daniel was a lazy ass when I went to school with him too. Bet he’ll retire in the next five years and you’ll take over.” Luke flips the food and remains woefully ignorant of the dark look on Ben’s face. 

Rey doesn’t miss it, even though she is doing her damndest not to let Ben notice her watching them. He doesn’t look at all thrilled by the prospect of taking over the practice and she cannot for the life of her fathom why. He was the one who switched majors in the middle of college - although, she always suspected Auntie Leia and her father had some influence over that decision. 

“Right… Well, we’re starting to accept new patients again, so the phone’s been ringing off the hook.” Ben takes a large gulp of his beer and she can’t help but track the way his throat bobs. He wipes his lips off, and she figures she’s already stared at him longer than is appropriate. “The poor nurses are running off their feet and I barely get a day off anymore.”

“Well, kid, you gotta earn your stripes before you get paid the big bucks, I’m afraid.” Luke flips the meat over, bopping his head along to another one of his horrid hair-band songs.

“It’s not really about the money,” Ben replies and Rey catches it then before she looks away. A stiffening of his limbs as he looks out over the pool without really seeing it, his gaze pensive.

“It’s always about the money,” Luke says, chuckling.

Everyone in the family is a doctor of some sort. Rey wants to be an artist, but every time she and her father discuss her career aspirations, it ends in an argument. She’s resigned herself to the fact that she will be attending med school, just like every other Organa before her.

Rey grabs the sun lotion in order to keep herself preoccupied from ogling her cousin. She chose to wear her new bikini. It’s aqua and accentuates her tan. It’s also just a little skimpier than the one she usually wears.

She absolutely did not choose it because Ben is over. No way.

“Oh, by the way, I want to book Rey in for a checkup. It’s probably time since she’s getting older.” Her father says this casually like Rey isn’t standing right there.

Her face burns. “Um, hi dad. It’s me, your daughter, who is standing right here,” she says, forgetting to be shy and throwing the two men a petulant glare.

Her father grumbles and rolls his eyes. Ben just tips her a sympathetic grin. She and Ben are both well aware that her father tends to embarrass her at any given opportunity, whether he does so willingly or not. He once regaled her friends with a story about how Rey had decorated her room with the contents of her diaper when she was two.

It’s something her friends - Kaydel, Rose, Finn and Poe - still like to bring up, to this day.

Rey blinks when she notices that Ben has not looked away this time. His eyes linger at the flat planes of her stomach and then he meets her eyes again. He has such pretty lips, she inwardly bemoans. They’re plush and whenever he’s thinking, he rolls them together.

For some reason, this innocuous little habit is the sexiest thing Rey has ever seen.

“I can book you in next week, Rey. Just let me know a day that works for you.” Her cousin’s teeth are white and slightly crooked, and she can see them in the awkward grin he throws her way. This little detail somehow only adds to the fucked-up charm Rey can’t seem to resist in him as of late.

“Okay,” she croaks and she’s clenching the sun lotion so hard, a whole bunch squirts into her awaiting hand.

Rey cringes at her clumsiness and glumly begins slathering her legs. Why is this so hard? Why can’t he just be her cool cousin Ben again who she (mostly) does not obsess over? Why can’t they go back to the way things were? Why did she have to walk into his house that day, at precisely the wrong moment? Why did she have to go upstairs and…?

Rey hums in her head to drown out memories of the past.

Her father speaks a bit more to Ben about booking her in and then mutters something about grabbing the laundry from downstairs. With her mother gone for ten years now, Rey and her father split the chores in the house. He agreed to manage the laundry because she hates doing it. With his hectic work schedule, she mainly handles the rest. She’d rather scrub all the toilets in the house than haul laundry hampers up and down the stairs.

Rey hears Ben’s footsteps behind her, and she turns in time to watch as he sits down on one of the recliners. His abs shift with his movements and she’s stuck to stillness for an instant, staring at his muscles like they have the secrets of the universe written on them.

Ben clears his throat.

Rey nearly jumps out of her skin, her eyes skittering up to meet his as guilt squirms like worms in her gut. He has sunglasses on now, so she can’t really see what his expression is, but she’s positive he caught her checking him out.

“Well, now that Luke isn’t here, is there anything specific the nurses should know that’s bothering you?” He sounds normal when he speaks, although he never used to be this formal with her. Before, they could talk about just about anything to one another.

Rey is half-turned away from him, and she tries to adopt that same unaffected tone he has. She’s never been a very good actress though. At least not with Ben. “I think dad wants me to get… you know what, checked. Because of mom.”

The “you-know-what” doesn’t really need to be said. Her mother died from cervical cancer over ten years ago, so she’ll have to be checked regularly for the rest of her life.

“Right, I gathered that much,” Ben says with a faint smirk at her word choice. What she would give for him to just drop the preppy doctor routine and act like the old him. The real him. The one who used to wear band t-shirts, who had torn jeans and a goatee.

The one who could stand to be in her presence for longer than a few hours.

“Anything else I should know about?”

_ How about that I might be in love with you, you dolt? _

There is a sort of self-destructive appeal to saying this out loud, but she knows she won’t. 

“Well…” Rey trails off, still not quite looking at him.

“Well?” Ben prompts gently.

She’s not sure if she should mention that her boobs have been sore lately. She’s much smaller in her build and frame than other people her age - what her father dubs as a “late bloomer” - and by extension, her boobs are a lot smaller as well. A fact which is she is overly aware of. Rey turns her back on Ben, finding this easier to say it out loud. He’s a doctor - or he will be soon. This is just a professional conversation so he can help the nurses with her appointment. Super professional.

“My chest… Has been sore lately.”

“Ah,” Ben says and now her face is bright red. “That’s pretty normal. But just to be safe, the nurses will take a look at everything.”

“O-okay,” she says and now all she’s thinking about is Ben checking her breasts. Touching them and…

“How have you been? I know I haven’t been around much lately.”

This question is asked more softly than he’s spoken yet and she turns to face him on instinct, the depth of his voice pulling her in like a magnet, as it always has. He’s pulled off his shades and leaned forward so he’s resting his elbows on his knees, looking up at her with… Is that guilt in his eyes?

“I’m good.” The wad of lotion is forgotten in her hands as they look at one another. “Victory lap is all done now. Grad was a few weeks ago, so I pretty much hang out here all day and swim. Pretty boring.” 

She - along with all her friends - had jointly decided to stick out high school for another year. Her grades are  _ okay  _ but nothing to write home about. The only classes she has been any good at were art, history, and writing. Her father was not pleased with her final GPA, but high school is down now, for better or for worse. 

Ben laughs softly, but he’s still got that wistful cast to his eyes. Rey cannot look away from him - not even if a large moon-shaped spaceship was to appear in the sky and threaten to obliterate the planet. 

“Wish I had that much free time. Remember all our drives? Can't believe how much time we spent, tooling around town.” He laughs again, looking away from her and towards the pool, though she suspects he is not really taking in the view. He looks the way she feels all the time now - filled with a blistering kind of nostalgia for a past they will never get back. 

“I miss them.” It’s out of her mouth before she can take it back and her spines prickles with sweat and nerves.  _ I miss you _ . 

Oh, but she’s far too much of a coward to say that out loud. 

Ben pauses like she  _ did  _ say that thought out loud. Like she screamed it at him and they are now left in a shattering silence. His gaze shifts for the briefest instant to her stomach and chest. But she knows that’s not possible. He wouldn’t be interested in… No, it must have been a trick of the sunlight and heat.

“Me too, sweetheart.” He pauses again, uncertain in a way she’s never seen from him before, but before he can say whatever it is he was going to say, Luke opens the patio door, grumbling about how the dryer is on the fritz again. 

Ben sits back in his chair and puts his sunglasses on, and Rey knows that their conversation is over. For the rest of the afternoon, she wonders just what it was he was going to say before her father interrupted them.

*

Later, after Ben has gone home for the night and her father retires to the living room to drink more beer and inevitably pass out in front of a sports game she has no interest in, she goes up to her room. She’s still in her bikini and she shivers as she jumps up onto her four-poster bed.

Naturally, like any other healthy nineteen-year-old with access to the internet, Rey discovered porn early on. Although her sexual experience amounted to kissing a boy on the lips in the third grade, she still had the same urges as everyone else. And after seeing Ben today...

She can pinpoint many moments in her life. She remembers her mother’s funeral, even though all that remains of that woman are bleary snapshots in her mind. She remembers skipping out on her middle school graduation to drive around with Ben and she remembers  _ that night _ too, of course. The night with the Christmas ornament, and then the time at the cabin in the woods when they…

And she remembers finding the video, too. 

Two years ago, when all this misery started. Two years ago, when a newfound need began to consume her every waking thought. The video helps. It satiates her desire in a way nothing else can because she knows nothing will ever come from her daydreams and desires. It was really the man in the video who had done it. Although he did not look exactly like Ben, she remembered hovering over the thumbnail for a good minute while her heartbeat in a strange, uneven rhythm in her chest.

Then she clicked on it.

The man in the video was big, like Ben. With long dark hair and brown eyes. Large hands that could grip just about anything. And his cock… Well, even two years ago, she had found herself wondering if that man’s cock would be similar to her cousin’s too, just like everything else about the man. 

Is Ben’s cock long and thick too? How big is the head? How thick? And just how much would he come if he fucked her as hard as the man did to the girl in the video? And, most shamefully of all, she often wondered if Ben would ask her to call him…  _ that _ ? Would he make her beg? Make her wheedle and plead and tell her she could not come unless she is  _ obedientandsuchagoodgirlforhim.  _

Rey bites her lip and after eyeing her bedroom door furtively, she pulls up the video on her laptop. Two years after discovering it, the video is still hidden in an encrypted file her father will never find on her laptop. She’s probably watched it over a thousand times and every time since the first time she got herself off to it, she always - always - pictures herself and her cousin as the people in that video.

_ Me too, sweetheart. _

Soon, Rey’s hand is down her bikini bottoms and she’s picturing her cousin’s fingers inside her right when the wave crashes. Her closed eyes are filled with shooting stars, all green, yellow, and red.


	2. Sadness is a Gentle Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sorry it’s me this time. We got swamped today and the nurses ran out of time slots. Is that okay with you, or would you rather reschedule?”
> 
> Rey shakes her head fast, before she can even think about it. “No, no. This is fine.”
> 
> Yep. Absolutely fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a bit of Doctor/Patient here, but very mild. 
> 
> Buckle up, folks, this Slowburn is more of a burning ember before the inferno.

She is five years old in this memory.

Not much of the flight from Orange County to Ohio comes back to her. Her parents were there, that much she knows from secondhand stories. Aunt Leia was also there, though she has no memory of this either. 

Only two things really stand out to her through the distorting lens of time.

The first:

Through the narrow oval window next to her seat, the sky is really just an endless blue stretch that fades to the blackness of space. Below, though, that blue stretch is abruptly cut in half by a thick cloud of blankets. She only really remembers the horizon, where beneath that cloud cover was inexplicably the whole wide world.

There is a piece of paper in front of her and a black crayon. She does not remember who provided the paper to her, what was to be her first canvas of many. She  _ does _ recall drawing a straight line across the middle and beaming when she looks out the window to approximate, in only the way five years olds can, that she has gotten it just right.

The second:

She nudges the boy sitting next to her in his seat. He’s already tall for thirteen years old, his black hair cut short so that his big ears are noticeable. He’s wearing Converse high-tops and she remembers the white stars on the side of his shoes and that his shoelaces were neon green. She also remembers the way he’s staring sullenly down at the  _ Gameboy _ in his hands, but the broody teenage act has something a little darker to it this time.

There is anger in his brown eyes, but it’s not for her. Never for her.

“Look,” she says when she has his attention. 

He sighs, in that put-upon thirteen-year-old manner, and then he takes her drawing, frowning down at it when he does not understand.

She silently points out the window, to the floating paradox in the sky.

Ben’s face clears and it’s like the sun peeking out from between black summer clouds, a brief smile surfacing just for her. Always just for her. 

She will not know until a few years later that they were flying to Ohio to attend a funeral for Ben’s father. That Ben barely knew the man and that his father’s sole legacy was a 1966 black Mustang that he named The Falcon, often showing it more affection than the boy he agreed to adopt. The very same car that Ben would come to inherit, the one they would drive across much of Southern California once he got his license.

The car she would come to fall in love with him in.

For now, though, it’s that horizon and its definitive black stroke of clouds and flawless blue sky.

“It’s great, kid,” Ben tells her in the solemn manner of his.

And she knows, even at that age, that a passion has been born. She’ll keep drawing for the rest of her life, just to see if she can get that same reaction from him again. All unconsciously done, so that she might pull that memory out from its hollow grave and shine it up into something new and precious.

Something that is theirs.

*

It’s the end of the day when Rey finally gets in the examination room for her doctor’s appointment. Her house has felt extra lonely this summer with her friends gone to all corners of the country for summer break. But she knows even if they were around, she wouldn’t really bother to see them all that much anyway.

There’s a grey fog hovering over every step she takes. It’s been there for two years now; a vacuum in which normal human experiences seem less vital than they once were. Where laughter is dulled and muffled, and the sights of the world coming through on a jaded filter. Something is missing and Rey knows exactly what that is.

Or who, more aptly, for all the good that it’s done her.

So, when the door to her examination room opens and it’s Ben who walks in, wearing a nice green dress shirt and charcoal dress pants (something he would have rather been shot dead in than be seen wearing back in the day), and a stethoscope over his neck, she cannot help but gawk at him, with her lips parted with surprise.

She had been expecting a nurse, or another doctor. Not her cousin.

Her phone is forgotten in her lap, one of her earbuds still in her ear as she listens to  _ Cat Power _ . She’s been in a mellow kind of mood with her music lately. Ben sits down in a swivel chair that is situated in front of a tiny desk and a computer, offering her a distracted smile before pausing in his motions to frown at her expression. 

No doubt because she looks rather like she’s been hit over the head.

She goes to speak, to perhaps say hi to him like any other normal human being would, or  _ maybe _ , to tell him she’s been secretly in love with him for who knows how long now. Who is to really know?

Only, she never quite gets the words out because at that exact moment, her spit gets caught in her throat and she breaks into a coughing fit.

_ Wow, this is going super _ , Rey thinks, utterly mortified.

“Whoa, you okay?” Ben reaches towards her without quite touching her, his face drawn with concern. If she weren’t so busy trying not to asphyxiate on her own saliva, she might have been somewhat relieved to see an expression from him that wasn’t vague discomfort.

Rey gives him a thumbs up, her eyes watering and her face bright red as she tries and fails to smile. The coughing eventually tapers off and she can breathe again.

“I’m okay, just went down the wrong pipe,” she croaks. Really, she just wants to find the tallest building and pitch herself off of it from embarrassment. 

She takes out her earbud and turns her music off.

Ben gives her a final searching look before turning to her chart. “What were you listening to?” he inquires without looking at her.

Rey is a little thrown off by the question, but she answers him anyway. “ _ Half of You _ . You know, by -”

“ _ Cat Power _ ,” Ben finishes with a soft smile. “You’ve got good taste.”

“Learned from the best.”

She offers him a bashful shrug and then they’re staring at each other again, polite smiles fading away as a strange tension settles over the room. His hair is longer than he normally wears it and she finds she prefers it this way. It looks feather soft and brushes his shoulders in soft waves. His eyes look lighter than normal today, almost hazel with the green of his shirt. She can hear the nurses speaking to each other out in the hall, packing up for the day and leaving. Really, though, she is just thinking about the past. It’s all she thinks about whenever they’re alone together. She wonders if Ben feels the same.

He seems to shake himself first and he turns away, clearing his throat as he eyes her chart again.

“Sorry it’s me this time. We got swamped today and the nurses ran out of time slots. Is that okay with you, or would you rather reschedule?”

Rey shakes her head fast, before she can even think about it. “No, no. This is fine.”

_ Yep. Absolutely fine. _

Ben nods and puffs out a breath, his chair creaking when he leans back in it. “Okay, if you’re comfortable, why don’t we start with your breast pain. Tell me some more about that.”

Rey nearly chokes on her spit again, but somehow, she manages to hold herself together. 

“Well… It started a few months ago. Comes and goes. Seems to be the worst, um, here.” She gestures towards where her nipples are, hidden beneath her bra.

“Alright.” He has a pen in one hand, and he keeps clicking it open and closed. He seems to notice what he’s doing and puts the pen down on the desk. “You’re nineteen now, so you should be done with most of your growing at this point. But you’re still young. Breast pain is pretty normal, even when you get into your twenties. Do you find it just precipitates your menstruation, or is it random?”

Her face flames when he says “menstruation” and she mentally berates herself to grow up and stop being an idiot. “Um, no. It’s random.”

“Okay.” Ben stands up and runs a paper sheet over the bed before washing his hands. She watches the way the muscles in his arms shift before her eyes drop down to his bum, with absolutely no permission from her brain.

_ Hot damn _ .

Even through his pants, she can tell his ass is muscular. Her mouth goes dry and when Ben turns around, her eyes skirt back up to his. 

This time, his expression shifts for an instant, a brief smirk surfacing before he returns to his desk, where he pulls out a drawer and withdraws a blue gown. She knows she got caught this time too and inwardly bemoans her lack of covert ogling skills.

“Can you put this on for me? Just the bra and shirt come off.”

Her stomach fills with lead and Ben seems to sense her hesitation because the smirk is gone.

“I’m just going to do a quick exam and make sure there’s no bumps or cysts. If you’re okay with that?” He says this so gently, he dispels the worst of her nerves.

Rey nods and gets up, going to unbutton her shirt before he can sit down at his desk. He blinks down at her hands working through her buttons before he turns around to give her privacy. She has no idea how these examinations work, or if he’s supposed to leave the room, so she blushes and works through her top and bra quickly, putting the gown on so it’s open in the front. She pinches the material in the middle and hops up on the table, waiting nervously.

“Okay,” she says quietly, to let him know she’s decent.

Ben turns back to her, his eyes glued to hers. “You can keep your gown closed like that. I’ll reach underneath and examine that way. Sounds good?”

Did his voice just drop down an octave?

Rey swallows and nods, offering him a weak smile. This whole situation should be a lot weirder than it is, but she finds it’s not weird at all. She’s strangely excited, her heart beating rapidly in her chest and her panties a little wet. Thank god he’s not doing the pap smear today. She knows what those are, her friend Rose has gotten them ever since she became sexually active.

Ben’s face rearranges itself into a mask of professionalism. She hates how easy it is for him to stow away all his emotions, how little this seems to matter to him. Then, he is leaning close to her side and reaching under her gown, and she forgets to be angry with him.

His hand brushes her tummy and she jumps a little before forcing herself to remain still for him. First, he checks the tissue under her arm, feeling around for bumps she presumes. He does this on both sides, murmuring softly when she shifts. It tickles, but she knows this is important and she doesn’t want to act like a stupid kid.

“I’m going to check the left one first. Still doing okay?” His breath fans against her cheek, shifting the small hairs on her temple.

“Yep,” she squeaks. She waits with bated breath and then, his fingers are gently rubbing into the underside of her left breast.

“What about here? Does this hurt?” he asks, lowly.

“Nope.”

“Good.” He goes in a circle, not lingering and remaining utterly professional throughout. He checks all around the areola before his fingers press against her nipple.

Rey gasps. She can’t help it. A raw feeling shoots through the point of contact, straight to her aching core.

“Did that hurt?” he asks with concern. He doesn't quite pull away, just eases off the pressure.

“No Ben,” she rasps, not really thinking about what she’s saying. She’s far more concerned with his fingers on her nipple.

Ben stiffens beside her, a hard breath brushing across her face. Her nipples are raw and hard, and she knows he can feel how hectic her heart is going. He presses once more, his fingers brushing the sensitive peak, making her gasp again.

"What about there? Did that hurt, sweetheart?"

_ Shit, shit, shit _ , Rey thinks, inwardly panicking. How is this making her so wet? What the fuck is wrong with her?

She is trembling a little when she murmurs, "No."

Suddenly, he clears his throat and his hand moves on to the right one. He checks that one more quickly and then pulls away, turning for his chair before she can blink. His back is to her as he begins typing away on the computer, his fingers flying across the keyboard.

“They seem healthy. No bumps or anything that I can find.”

“That’s good,” she squeaks, then winces at her unnaturally high-pitched tone.

“I’m going to book a follow up for you in a week. We’ll get that pap test done and do another breast exam, just to make sure things are still good.” He’s not looking at her at all now.

Rey fiddles with her gown, slightly breathless and tingly, especially in her breasts. Soon after, Ben leaves her to change back into her clothes and then he walks her out. They stand together in the doorway and he looks almost pained. He won’t meet her eyes and she tries not to let his avoidance shatter whatever remaining dignity she has left. She really does. The memory-touch of him lingers on her skin. She wonders if he can still feel her nipples under his fingers and decides it’s time for her to leave before she really does say something stupid.

“I would drive you home, but I have a ton of paperwork to get through.”

“No worries.” There, normal tone of voice. She’s even smiling, although she would not be at all surprised to know that it looks more like a grimace. “I’ve gotten pretty used to taking the bus in the last few years.”

Although Rey does well by keeping the anger from her voice, Ben’s gaze snaps to hers like she physically shot him. They murmur their goodbyes like they're in a funeral parlor rather than a deserted doctor's office. Everyone has gone home already and as Rey walks down the hall, she hears the doctor’s office door click locked behind her.

On the trip down the elevator, all she can think about is his fingers on her nipple and his voice rasping in her ear.

_ Did that hurt, sweetheart? _

Her thighs rub together in a bid for relief she’ll never find.

*

Her words to Ben have been playing on a loop for the last few days. Her subtle cruelty winding itself throughout her consciousness like a malignant mantra, following her from dusk til dawn. Most of all, she keeps replaying the way he had looked at her after she said it like she had slapped him across the face with all the unspoken things laying at their feet. 

_ I’ve gotten pretty used to taking the bus in the last few years. _

Was it necessary for her to say that to him? Did it make her feel any better? Did saying that help anything at all? Because on its own, that sentence was harmless. But they had both known what lay under it. All those neat little accusations, like ducks sitting in a row. The hurt in her eyes had been enough, she knows now. And she probably knew it then, too. 

Sometimes, Rey thinks she should just let it all go and move on. Ben is her cousin and he’s all grown up now, departing from the past with such ease she finds it both maddening and astounding. Maybe she should just grow up too.

But before she can attach any meaningful change to this line of thought, she remembers that slow, hard exhale across the side of her face when she told Ben that he was not hurting her. How he had paused, how he had  _ lingered  _ on her nipple, and oh hell, it makes her think that maybe it isn’t over at all. Maybe, after all this time, his rejection had not been of her, but of what it would mean if they both felt the same way. Even if only a little. 

Even Rey knows that nothing could ever happen, that it is probably a felony in most states to have sex with your cousin, adopted or not, and that their parents would disown them both…

_ If anyone found out,  _ a helpful, simpering voice whispers in her head. 

But no. No they couldn’t, and besides this is all conjecture anyway because Ben probably doesn’t like her that way. That moment in his office had been a fluke. A scratch of awareness before fading away to the taciturn, sterile lands of cordiality they had been playing at ever since she made one of the biggest mistakes in her life. 

So, perhaps she feels a little guilty for what she said. 

After all, if it had not been for her snooping two years ago, if it had not been for the night in the cabin and just… all of it, then maybe things would still be like the way they were before. Assigning blame, Rey decides, is useless. She does not want this stagnant resentment, this cloying fugue of despair and anger. There is a whole life ahead of her and although it will most likely be a life dictated by what her father wants for her, it’s a life all the same.

As she lays in bed, thinking over the uncertain future before her, her mind keeps returning to the same place that it’s been going to since her doctor’s appointment. All she can feel are the weight of his fingers on her skin. The gentle pressure, the rush of goosebumps and his breath against her cheek… No manner of mature reassurances will deflect that  _ feeling _ , no matter how much she rationalizes it all to herself. 

Rey groans, and throws her covers off to finally get out of bed. When she comes before the long mirror her father installed on the back of her bedroom door, all she sees is a petulant nineteen-year-old with a bad case of bed head and tired circles under her eyes. She’s putting on weight too, she can see. All that lazing around the house and moping on whatever furniture - whether its patio, the couch, or her bed - is starting to catch up with her. Not that she really cares too much, she’s always been too thin and rakish and…

Rey gets caught up on her face, though, and forgets to lament her curves. Hidden in the depth of her hazel eyes, like a quiet gleam of a streetlight on a frozen lake, she sees the longing she so desperately wants to be rid of. But it’s not really a matter of simple longing, is it, when everything beneath her breast bone aches like there is a piece of her missing. Scooped up, amputated, and taken hostage to a black pit of despair. 

“No,” she whispers to her reflection. “It doesn’t have to be this way… I can do this. I can - let go.” 

If it had been that easy, though, she would have done that a long time ago. She reaches a hand up to her hair and brushes it from her face. Then her fingers trail down, over the neckline of her t-shirt to trace to where her nipples are pressing through the fabric of her shirt.

_ Did that hurt, sweetheart? _

“ _ Rey _ !” her father calls from downstairs.

She visibly starts, her hand flying away from her breast as though it has caught fire. Opening her door a crack, she calls back out to Luke, sounding every bit the irritated teenager that she is.

“ _ What _ ?”

“Ben is coming over today. I’m going to get the pool tidied up. Can you clean the bathroom downstairs?”

She counts to three, willing her heart to slow back to normal. “Sure.”

Luke says more, but he’s moving away from the stairs and she can’t hear him anymore. She hates it when her father does that, like she somehow has supersonic hearing or can read minds, or something. The last she checked, she had neither of these abilities.

Rey quietly closes her door and then she’s facing her reflection once more, a defeated sigh pushing through her lips.

“I can do this,” she repeats to herself and as she makes her way to her bathroom to take a quick shower, she hopes that one day soon she’ll actually believe that.


	3. I Said Too Much, Said The Wrong Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re really tense,” Ben murmurs, low and quiet. She swears she can almost feel the heat of his body at her back.
> 
> “Sorry.” Of course, she’s blushing. Of fucking course.
> 
> “You don’t have to apologize.” That seems to be the end of it for a moment and then his hands are rubbing into shoulder blades, nearly making her melt right into the cedar deck. He seems to lean closer to her, although she can’t tell for sure, and then he says, “I can rub your back for you if you want. You used to love that.”
> 
> Rey tries to forget about the past. Unsuccessfully, at that.

Rey is crossing the kitchen in her grey cover and a pink bikini when she hears a familiar low rumble through the closed patio door.

_ Ben. _

Her heart gallops in her chest and she pauses by the door to peek outside. Ben is wearing his usual black swim trunks. Shirtless, too. She can almost feel his fingers on her breast again. She absolutely did not get herself off to that memory all week. Nope.

“I can do this,” Rey whispers, once more for luck. 

She’s going to be nice to him today. She’s going to be a big girl about this, and she’s definitely not going to linger on the memory of his hand on her breasts. Nope. No sir. 

She has barely closed the patio door behind her when her father rounds on her, almost startling her bad enough to jump right through the patio door, glass and all.

“Rey, would you please tell your cousin that Ravenclaws are superior to Slytherins?”

Rey can only gawk at both men in absolute blankness. 

This is one of those moments when her mind has been focused on other things (Ben) and she has been too busy lamenting (Ben) the world in typical teenage fashion. In moments like these, the words people say do not really sound like words at all, but complete and utter gibberish. It takes Rey far longer than it should to piece together what her father has asked her and by then, Luke has put his hands on his hips and Ben is -  _ dear god _ , when did he get so shredded, he looks like he has - yep, he has a fucking  _ eight-pack _ . 

And Rey is - well, she is  _ panicking  _ now because what the hell did her father ask her? Something about  _ Harry Potter  _ right? She knows she needs to say  _ something _ , but her brain short-circuited around the time her vision got caught on the defined ridges of Ben’s stomach. 

When the silence has dragged on for too long, Ben shuffles on his feet and decides to fill the void himself, like a dark prince coming to her rescue. 

“Apparently, Luke discovered the Sorting Hat quiz the other day.” Ben shrugs his not inconsiderate shoulders at her perplexed expression, as though he is just as exasperated with her father as she is. “I just had to explain to him what all the houses mean -  _ and _ how naturally, Slytherin is the best house.”

“Oh, and how is that?” Luke interrupts. His green eyes are glinting fiercely in the California sunlight the way they do whenever someone brings up the topic of sports, or god forbid, that they’re a Republican. Their neighbour had made that grave error only a week ago and had spent an uncomfortable hour in her father’s company while he explained in great detail how that “blithering idiot with a duck’s tail on his head is going to be responsible for nuking the entire planet”. Poor Mrs Kersh just did not see that fireball coming her way, though Rey could not help but agree with her father. 

Luke is usually right about these things, even if he is obnoxious about it. 

“Well, dear uncle, Slytherins are cunning, ambitious and clever.” Ben lists off these attributes with the gravity he would normally reserve for listing off a patient’s symptoms. “Ravenclaws are smart and all, but they’re kind of lame.”

“Not as bad as Hufflepuffs,” Rey adds almost automatically, as she ignores an indignant growl from her father. This innocuous discussion has brought on a brief memory. She has no idea what age she was, only that Ben had just finished reading her all the  _ Harry Potter _ books. They had taken the quiz together online and she remembers how she had been secretly devastated when he got sorted into Slytherin.

As though such things matter.

Luke huffs at Rey, in that way that lets her know that he is secretly out of depth, but that he will never let on. 

“Well, it’s no surprise your cousin got Slytherin.” Luke tosses Ben a smug grin over his shoulder, before smirking at her. “I always said that if anyone would get seduced to the dark side in this family, it would be my brooding nephew.”

Ben tries to suppress a disbelieving grin. Soft laughter breaks through anyway and whatever steel Rey has fortified against her cousin melts at the sight of it. He captures her gaze, sharing a look with her like she’s the only other sane person in the world, but they need to entertain the crazies just to survive. Like everything is normal, like that there isn’t this riving feeling rising up through her, consuming all her common sense. That she hasn’t gotten herself off nearly everyday for the last two years to his face, his body, his voice, his fucking  _ smile _ ...

Rey swallows thickly. Her eyes get stuck on the sweaty planes of Ben’s stomach again before she turns back to her dad and plasters on what she hopes is a convincing smirk.

“It’s a moot point. Gryffindor is the best, so you both lose.”

Her father throws his hands up towards the sky and Ben breaks into laughter. Her breath gets caught in her throat as she stares at the way his smile transforms his face from one of moroseness to one of grave beauty. His cheeks are dimpled, his slightly crooked teeth winking out in the most charming fucking grin she’s ever seen.

“You have to admit,” Ben says, ducking forward to aim a teasing grin at her that makes him seem more boyish than ever, “that’s something a Slytherin would say.” 

“Don’t try to win me over to the dark side. It will never work.”

Both men laugh at that, but she’s not looking at them anymore. She barely sees where she is going as she attempts to walk across the deck like a normal person would and not like her legs have suddenly become stilts. 

_ I’m going to die from cardiac arrest,  _ Rey thinks to herself in a strange lull of hysteria. _ Any second now, my left arm is going to go numb and I’m going to collapse on the deck. People will ask my dad what happened and all he’ll be able to tell them is that my cousin smiled at me. Then – poof! – dead. _

She grabs the sun lotion and turns towards the pool, taking slow measured breaths and coaching herself that everything is fine. Just fucking peachy.

_ Just act normal, Rey. Don’t think about his muscles or his fingers on your tits. Just act cool _ .

Inside, her father’s cell phone goes off and he mutters about them both being brats before he heads inside. After he departs to take what is certain to be a call from work, she hears Ben tinkering with something and then the Bose speaker comes on again, only it’s not the usual awful hair bands emitting from the speakers. A soft feminine voice echoes quietly across the deck and Rey smiles despite the fluttering of her nerves.

Figures he would put  _ Daughter _ on, only she thought he might have gone with something a little …happier?

_ I feel sick _ , Elena Tonra sings, and Rey finds she wholly agrees with that statement.

She slathers lotion up her legs and chest, still reeling from Ben’s smile and hardly listening to the music anymore. It was just like before, that smile. Before that day, before the swing set and the stupid Christmas ornament, before the cabin when she, when  _ they _ …

From behind her, she hears more amusement; soft chuckling at her expense that she can’t even be mad over. It’s the stupidest thing. She’s trying to do this awkward stretching act to reach her back, as sweat runs into her eyes and her arms contort to the point of discomfort. 

“Yes, I look like an idiot,” Rey grumbles, aiming a look over her shoulder as Ben appraises her with raised eyebrows and an amused grin. “You know, you could help me, rather than making fun.”

She meant it as an offhand suggestion, rather than a serious request. Anything to get his attention off her awkward reaching so she can get sun lotion on her upper back.

“I better, before you sprain something.” Ben walks over to her and she freezes, one of her arms bent at a severe angle so she can get the middle of her back, while the other is still struggling to reach the skin of her shoulder blades. “Here, turn around, turkey. I’ll get your back for you.”

Then, he’s standing really close, with a warm smile fixed in place. His chest is glistening with a fine sheen of sweat and she finds it’s suddenly quite hard to get any oxygen. She slowly lowers her arms and her gaze travels downward before she can think to stop herself, following the path of an errant bead of sweat. It drips down his left pectoral, over his abs and down to the light dusting of black hair that trails down the carved v of his pelvis, disappearing under his bathing suit, to…

Her mouth goes dry and all she can manage is a nod.

Ben does not comment on her staring and simply plucks the bottle out of her hands when she makes no move to hand it to him. His smile is still there, but now it has grown softer and crooked. Just the way he smiles when he is full of mischief. 

Then, she’s staring at his hands. She can’t help it. They’re huge, just like the rest of him. Blushing, she gives him her back and yelps when cold lathered hands touch down on her shoulders.

“The first part is always the coldest,” he says ruefully, his breath fanning across her back. He sounds just as mischievous as his little grin.

“Jerk.” It could be normal, what they’re doing. It could be just like before…

But it isn’t.

It isn’t because the second she breaks out into goosebumps from him rubbing sun lotion all over her, she’s just thinking about how stiff and hard her nipples have gotten and that she hopes he notices. That he takes another stuttered breath, like he did in the doctor’s office, to give her some fucking sign that she’s not the only one losing her damned mind over here.

His thick fingers massage the cream into her shoulders, and she holds her breath when he gently tucks them under the thin strings of her top so he doesn’t miss a spot. Then he’s working his way down, his hands lathering down to the small of her back. It feels good and her eyes flutter closed, her body swaying towards his like a magnet.

He doesn’t comment on this either. In fact, Ben must have stepped closer at some point because Rey can feel his breath at the top of her head. Soon, his hands are working more sun lotion on her ribs, the motions inadvertently shifting her boobs forward with every stroke in a way that is starting to make her squirm.

“You’re really tense,” Ben murmurs, low and quiet. She swears she can almost feel the heat of his body at her back.

“Sorry.” Of course, she’s blushing. Of fucking course.

“You don’t have to apologize.” That seems to be the end of it for a moment and then his hands are rubbing into shoulder blades, nearly making her melt right into the cedar deck. He seems to lean closer to her, although she can’t tell for sure, and then he says, “I can rub your back for you if you want. You used to love that.”

An electric feeling shoots through her stomach. She does not quite dare to call it excitement.

"Um, sure. If you don't mind doing it," Rey says. This is the most he's touched her in a long time.

"Wouldn't have suggested it otherwise." Then, in a softer tone, he murmurs, "I don't mind loosening you up a bit. You're going to throw out your back one day, sweetheart."

_ Sweetheart. _

“Right. Good. That’s good - well. I mean that  _ isn’t  _ good. The throwing out my back part, I mean,” Rey squeaks, but on the inside, she thinks,  _ Great. Just great. Way to go, moron.  _

Ben hums as he rubs into her skin, foregoing the lotion. Her heart slams against her chest, her breath leaving her in halves. His magical fingers continue working over the tense muscles of her back, somehow knowing the right pressure so he doesn’t end up tickling her. His hands are so large, they encircle her entire rib cage until the tips of his fingers touch just above her bellybutton. His thumbs sweep upward on the tense muscles near her spine and she moans softly in response before her eyes widen at the sound and she tries to pass it off as a cough. 

His hands still for just an instant, his breath blowing out hard onto the nape of her neck. Just like he did a few days ago. 

Rey can’t help but shiver.

After a few seconds, he goes back to massaging her back.

“So… how’s things going with Hanna?” she asks, absolutely ignoring that her voice has gone up an octave.

“You mean Adele?” Ben breathes a laugh when she gives him a noncommittal shrug. His girlfriends change so often, she can never keep up with their names. Besides, the thought of him dating other women is… very unpleasant for her lately.

Well, always really.

“I ended that a little while ago. She wanted kids and I have zero interest in that right now. Too busy with work.” By the flatness to his tone, he sounds utterly unconcerned by that fact. 

Rey smiles to herself, pleased that he’s single. Not that she could ever do anything about it. 

Desperate to keep this almost-normal conversation going, she flounders for more to say. “Guess you deal with enough babies now that you wouldn’t want to deal with one more.” Rey almost claps a hand over her mouth, but he’s rubbing her upper shoulders now and she does not want to disrupt him. “Sorry! I didn’t mean  _ she _ was a baby-”

“I know what you meant, turkey.” His hands are warm as they move back to her hips. He rubs soothing circles and she rocks back to him again at the feeling. “Either or, really. Adele was kind of an asshole. A little too country club for my taste.”

They both laugh quietly, like neither of them wants to be too loud for fear of shattering the moment. At least, that’s how Rey feels. She’s holding her breath, her eyes fluttering and his hands working steadily upwards on her tummy now. Her breasts shift forward again and now she can feel his chest brushing her back, his arms encircling her as he eases his fingers against her skin. She feels safe here, in his arms. This is almost familiar if it weren’t for the telltale wetness between her legs.

In her peripheral, she can almost see the side of Ben’s face and the way he is watching his hands rub up on her ribcage, her breasts shifting a little faster now with his movements.

“How’s the pain been in your chest?” he asks, in barely a hush of air at the top of her head.

“Not bad this week,” she replies shyly. Is he… looking at her boobs right now? She can’t help but hope so.

“Good. Let me know if anything changes.”

Her nipples feel raw and tender as they shift up and down, but she doesn’t dare move. His fingers swirl in relaxing patterns over the front of her ribcage, until the tips of his fingers brush the underside of her breasts. When her body sways back again, this time he is right there, her head falling against his chest.

“There you go, sweetheart. Just relax.” 

His voice is definitely deeper now, Rey thinks. And slightly husky. She fights not to squirm. 

His fingers stay under her breasts, his movements slowing slightly. Poe once called her a surfboard and she’s never quite gotten over it. Her boobs are small and a voice inside her head hopes that her cousin likes them.

“Better?” Ben rumbles behind her, his hands soothing down her skin without rubbing until his hands reach her hips. He grips them gently and squeezes a little, drawing a small gasp from her. He repeats the motion, his fingers somehow finding just the right pressure and his thumbs digging into the dimples in her lower back.

“Yeah,” she whispers, sounding dazed even to herself. What happened to the man who could barely look her in the eye when she left her doctor’s appointment this week? Maybe that doesn’t matter anymore, though. He’s so close, she can feel his heart beating against her back.

Suddenly, the patio door swishes open and Ben steps away. He takes the heat with him, leaving her in goosebumps. By the time she jumps in the pool, Ben and her father are already speaking again. She just needs to clear her head. 

Ben isn’t - surely, he isn’t interested in her that way.

Right?

*

Later that night, long after Ben has gone home and her father is in his favourite chair in the living room, Rey takes the stairs two at a time to get to her room. She quickly closes her door before hopping on her bed and grabbing her laptop from her nightstand. The ache inside her is fierce, the impressions of Ben’s fingers burned into her skin, and it’s not long before she boots up the video from her encrypted file.

She hurriedly stuffs her hand in her bikini bottoms, and she runs her other hand over her ribs, trying to mimic the way Ben massaged her earlier. When she comes, she has to stifle a bone-rattling cry into her pillow.

She knows what she would have screamed if her father hadn’t been home.

_ Ben. _


	4. What You Want Me To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey doesn't give herself time to question it - she just goes for it, her stomach shooting up the way someone’s might when they go bungee jumping and have just taken that perilous plummet into the unknown.
> 
> “Um… I've been meaning to tell you that I got sore again. You know, in my chest."
> 
> What am I doing? A part of her mind shrieks, while at the same time a more persistent part of her says, What do I have to lose?
> 
> Ben's doesn’t look at all surprised like she thought he would be. Rather, his jaw shifts a little, like he might be suppressing a smirk. There's a knowing glitter to his eyes she pretends not to notice while she tries not to blush and look like the complete liar that she is.
> 
> "Really."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are now diving headfirst into that E Rating, so beware of Explicit content ahead. 
> 
> A gentle reminder that Rey is nineteen and fully consenting. There is some very light Dom/Sub tones here, and that will only increase as the story goes on. 
> 
> Enjoy the shameless porn, folks! :D

She is seven years old in this memory.

This is the second funeral she has ever been to, although she hardly remembers anything about the first one. Only the plane ride comes back to her with any real clarity; that looming horizon that she sometimes still sees in her dreams.

This funeral she remembers quite clearly. 

Everything from the chilly December rain, the black umbrellas that loomed overhead like a terrible plume, and a cold, wet hand clutching hers. Her father is standing away from her, just out of reach. There, at the side of the grave, not looking at her, not holding her, or comforting her, or doing much of anything. He is the only person not holding an umbrella. His greying blonde hair is plastered to his forehead, his green eyes bloodshot as he stares at the coffin lowering into the ground. 

She does not understand what death is. All she knows is that mom got really sick a few months ago and that she went to live at the hospital. She was not allowed to see her at the end. Her goodbye to her mother was weeks ago, though she had not known it at the time. 

No, she does not understand death, yet she knows that her mother is in the shiny black box being lowered into the ground. That her mother is in there, but that she somehow is also not in there at the same time.

“Your mama moved on,” Aunt Leia tried to explain to her a few days ago, as they sat in her aunt’s dining room without the lights on and with just a candle for company. The shadows had flickered across the lines in her aunt’s face and all she saw there was grief, though she somehow understood that hers was different from Luke’s. Maybe she was remembering someone else at that moment, someone who was also gone. “She’s not in pain anymore. She’s somewhere special now, somewhere that will bring her peace.”

“Can I visit her?”

“Honey…”

She does not remember the rest of the conversation. She’s been staying at Aunt Leia’s for over a week now and while she was happy to be having so many sleepovers with Ben, she missed her parents. She has not seen her father in several days and every time she has asked for him, her Aunt tells her that he’s staying with her mother.

And then, a few nights ago, she woke up late and left the warm safety of Ben’s bed to creep downstairs. She could hear Leia crying in the dining room, her phone sitting in front of her on the table and her arms wrapped around herself, as though she was giving herself a hug.

She did not understand that either.

Death is absence. That is all she knows at the age of seven. Death is watching your father shatter apart, one piece at a time until he has become someone completely unrecognizable. Death is cold December rain, making her nose runny and her fingers chilly.

The hand gripping hers squeezes gently and she peers up at Ben, puzzled as to why everyone else is crying. Ben isn’t crying, but he doesn’t look happy either. He’s staring at the coffin without really seeing it, his mind far and away. She knows this because for the last couple of years, since their plane ride to Ohio, he looks this way all the time. Until she snaps him out of it, usually by tickling his feet.

He has very ticklish feet.

When the coffin is finally in the ground, Aunt Leia leaves Ben and her to join Luke’s side, wrapping her arm through his. Luke leans his head on hers and his eyes close as though he is in great pain. He’s not much taller than his sister. They’re twins, Ben once told her. Born minutes apart. She remembers telling Ben that she wished they were twins too and oh, how he had laughed at that.

“Why is everyone so sad?” she asks without bothering to keep her voice down. “Mama is in a special place now. Aunt Leia said so.”

Someone makes a scandalized sound, although she is too young to really understand what that means either, Ben just smiles down at her. Although it’s that faint, barely-there smile he wears more often lately, she can’t help but smile back at him.

“That’s right, kiddo. She is,” Ben tells her, using his free hand to wipe raindrops from her cheeks.

A few years later, on a summer night when they’ve put up a tent in her backyard and they’re lying in their sleeping bags, Ben tells her under the cover of darkness there is no heaven and God. That it’s just a story we invented to make death easier to bear.

“Promise you won’t ever leave me,” she whispers to him.

His hand is cold when it grips hers, just like it had been all those years ago on that rainy December day.

“Promise.”

*

Rey is surprised when her father tells her that Ben is coming over again… And excited as well, to her own consternation. 

Ben never comes over two days in a row anymore and she can’t help but hope that maybe she was right. That maybe he’s affected in the same way she is…

Then she finds out that the air conditioning in his house is being fixed and he wants to use their pool to cool off. Her hopes are dashed a little, but as the day goes on, she notices that Ben is acting more and more like his old self. She lingers on the deck to continue working on her tan for most of the day while the men talk. Luke is listening to more mellow music for once, something that could almost pass for the kind of stuff she and Ben used to listen to together.

“Who is this, dad?” Rey asks as Ben sits in the reclining chair next to her. She tries not to steal anymore peeks at his bared skin, but fails miserably, like always. 

Without warning, Ben yanks the sun lotion from her hand. She looks affronted at his cheeky grin until her eyes drop to where his large hands are fanning white lotion across his chest.

“Uh,  _ New Order _ ,” Luke replies, sounding minutely horrified. 

When Rey whips her head back towards her father, it takes her a few seconds to realize it’s because she did not remember the artist. Not because she was checking out her cousin. Thank Christ for small favours.

“Right. Can’t believe I forgot that,” she squeaks. She manages to calm herself enough to lean back in her chair, waiting tensely for Ben to go back to chatting with her dad, but he surprises her by kicking off his sandals and leaning back on the chair next to her.

“So, turkey. What are your plans for the fall?” Ben asks, that cheeky smile still hovering on his lips. 

Rey shoots him a withering look at the nickname, but there is no real heat behind it. He has been calling her an array of pet names since time out of mind, and secretly, she loves every single one. 

Aiming a subtle glance at her father, she pauses in her response. She and Luke haven’t argued about college for a week now, which is a fucking record by their standards. She certainly doesn’t want to start a fight now, so when she looks back at Ben, she keeps her voice down.

“Dad and I have agreed I’m going to take a year off.” She’s playing with the string of her bikini bottoms and when Ben’s gaze flickers from her to his uncle, she sees a knowingness there. He has always been perceptive. It’s what she both loves and hates about him.

“Not a bad idea,” he murmurs, wisely keeping his voice down as well.

“Guess so.” Rey shrugs and blows out a heavy breath. “I might get a part-time job. Dad never let me work during high school. I think it would be good for me. Give me you know, responsibilities, or something.”

Ben smirks, shaking his head. “Wow. Could you be more spoiled?”

“Hey!” she exclaims, but she’s smiling a bit too. “If anyone spoiled me over the years, it was you, mister.”

“True. I guess I always did give you everything you wanted.” 

Oh, but not everything. 

_ Rey… we can’t. We just can’t. I’m sorry. _

Every muscle in her body locks as she hears those words replay in her head. Words from over two years ago, words she will never forget. And there goes her smile and good mood, in one fell stroke.

She slips away to swim after that. 

Ben frowns as she goes, confused by her abrupt departure. If she stays near him, she’s going to think about him rubbing sun lotion all over her and then she’s going to think about screaming his name into her pillow when she came last night… 

But really, she knows it is because of all those memories. 

Some of them are sweet and innocent, just little moments between them throughout the years. Precious, like a forgotten photograph or treasure from the past. While other memories are… No. And  _ no, no, no.  _ She will not do this right now. She will not think about these things because it’s only a matter of time before she returns to the shy, bumbling routine, and he goes back to his cold awkwardness, and she just wants to avoid it all.

After dinner has been cleaned up, Luke goes inside to take a call for work. The hospital is always calling for him, even on his day off to do consults. Rey decides to swim some more and dives into the pool from the diving board. Ben is lazing away on one of their reclining chairs with one of his arms tucked under his head and a pair of black Ray-bans on like he’s some Hollywood movie star.

She’s only looked at his biceps like once. Maybe five times max.

She is circling around the pool, enjoying the California sunset. She’s just getting her hormones and wayward thoughts under control when a large splash suddenly envelopes her. 

Rey splutters, her eyes watering when pool water goes up her nose, to find her cousin treading water right next to her and grinning with the mischievousness of a teenage boy. His hair is wet and slicked back, accentuating his big ears. He has always been self-conscious of them and grows his hair long to hide them. Secretly, Rey always thought they were cute and made him seem less intense. She would never tell him that though.

“Oops, didn’t see you there,” Ben says, tipping her a coy wink and for a short while, she forgets her weird attraction to him. He’s in a really good mood today, which is a rarity, and despite her best efforts to avoid him, he just won’t let her.

They end up splashing each other, her giggles lighting up the evening air. For a short while, things are wonderfully normal again. Wonderfully them. Soon, she’s jumping on his back, demanding he lugs her around the pool. Her legs wrap around his waist and she plants her body on his back, enjoying the view of the world from his height. His hands dutifully go around her thighs and he drags her around the pool as requested, pretending to be put upon until she pinches his ribs.

“I’ll drop you and dunk your head,” he says, and despite the threat, she can tell he’s grinning.

“No, you won’t,” Rey says in a sing-song and then she pretends he’s a horse, slapping the wet skin of his shoulders. “Mush, Ben! Giddy-yup!”

He laughs and the sound of it vibrates through his back into her skin. Giggling softly, she rests her cheek against his wet hair and makes sure she’s not strangling him by placing her hands on his shoulders. She sighs, happy and carefree. She really does miss him, all other things aside.

Ben squeezes her thighs and then rubs them under the water. “I missed you, turkey.”

She almost jumps at his words. It is like he is reading her mind, almost like the way they were when they were kids and they would finish each other’s sentences all the time. Like they really were twins and had that strange ESP Leia and Luke seem to share. 

“Yeah?” 

Rey cannot help the pathetically hopeful tone any more than she can suddenly change the sun freckles on her cheeks and shoulders. She wishes she could see his face right now, but she’ll settle for clinging onto his back like they did when they were younger. They’re in the shallow end now and he’s aimlessly steering them around the pool. Dad is still inside, on his call presumably and Rey silently wills him to stay in the house. To leave them to this rare, peaceful moment. 

“Yeah,” Ben says, laughing softly. Almost wistfully. “Work has been… well, a lot. I want to be around more, though. I miss this, just…”

“Hanging out?” she supplies quietly. She absentmindedly brushes his hair off the nape of his neck. 

Ben immediately tenses up, like she shocked him with a live wire. She feels more than hears his hard exhale, and her heart begins beating faster for a completely different reason altogether. Oops. Maybe she shouldn’t have done that. That might have been crossing some line that she still does not know the definition of. 

But then, Ben surprises her. 

He does not let her go, as she thought he would, in a mad race to put an appropriate amount of space between them - somewhere around the distance between the moon to the earth. Instead, he hoists her up against his back a little higher and does not relinquish his grasp on her legs. 

Her heart patters a little faster. 

“Well, anyway, you’re probably not home much anymore either. You still hanging out with Finn and Rose? And that Dameron kid? Poe right?”

“Yeah, his name is Poe. And no, not really,” she says truthfully. “Kaydel is the only one around this summer and there is only so much shopping I can take. I love her, and all, but she’s -”

“Vapid?” Ben finishes for her, and again she has to hold herself together from showing her surprise. It is as though they’ve teleported back in time, to when things were still right and true in the world. 

“Exactly!” Rey exclaims as he takes them in another slow revolution around the shallow end. “She’s got a heart of gold, but she’s a simple creature - that’s what Finn says, anyway.”

“To put it nicely,” Ben agrees and she stifles more giggles into his hair. 

He has never really liked her friends all that much - especially Poe and Kaydel. Admittedly, Poe rubs everyone the wrong way, as Rey well knows, and Kaydel is as dumb as soup. Kind-hearted and generous, but just plain stupid most of the time. Ben tolerates Finn and Rose - well, surprisingly, he has always gotten along with Rose, if only because she doesn’t take anyone’s shit and is quick to tell them where to go and how to get there. Including Ben, on more than one occasion. 

Smiling to herself, Rey continues to babble on and Ben listens as dutifully as he always used to. “Anyways. Finn is moving to Chicago for dance school soon. Rose and Poe are kind of a thing now and they’re thinking about heading upstate to do something with the forests… Don’t ask me the details on  _ that  _ because I suspect that was more Rose’s engineering than Poe’s. And I’m staying here and figuring things out.”

It is unexpected then; the sadness that wells up in her at the thought of her friends going away without her. She has not spared them much mind this summer - or really in the last while at all. And now that they’re drifting apart she feels… Oddly regretful. 

“It’s hard when friends move away,” Ben murmurs quietly. Again, she wishes she could see his face, but she’ll have to settle for the back of his head. 

“It is what it is,” Rey replies with a quiet dignity that belongs to someone much older than her. 

“Well, if I know you’re actually going to be home, then I’ll stop by. When I can,” he adds on the last bit, as though speaking to himself more than to her. 

“That would be great. Really great.” 

She blushes at herself, but she is still smiling like an idiot. Maybe they can really get past everything. Finally, they can move on. She’ll settle for that if nothing else. 

“So… no dating, then?” His inquiry is faintly reproving, in that somber and vaguely protective way he has always mastered in her presence, but the feeling that shoots through her at those words cannot quite be called excitement. A pale cousin, perhaps. 

“Nope. Couldn’t be bothered, to be honest. Most of the boys I know are idiots, or gay. Or just - yeah - idiots. Kind of a small dating pool to draw from when 99% of the people I would be interested in act like they’re twelve.” 

“99%?” Ben takes them on another lap. He shifts a little under her and when she murmurs that she can get off if he wants her to, his response is immediate. “No, no. Just adjusting.”

“Okay,” she sighs happily and rests her head on his shoulder again. “Sorry, what did you ask me before?”

“About the 99%. It sounded like there might be someone who doesn’t - to use your words - act like they’re twelve.”

Rey pauses, floundering for the smallest instant. She is caught between two extremes and suddenly feels that nothing she says will be the  _ right  _ thing to say. She does not want to make him think she is interested in him, just so that they can go back to all that awkwardness, yet she also does not want to make him think that she is  _ not  _ interested in him in the off, nearly non-existent chance that he might somehow, impossibly, very improbably like her too. If only a little. 

“Well, um,” Rey squeaks and then lifts her head from his shoulder in case he can feel her cheeks burning. “There’s not really anyone in particular. Mostly. You know… I think I just - well, I don’t… I am not really into dating boys. Or girls.” She wants to stop babbling, she really does, but it’s like she can’t all of a sudden. “Or like non-gender conforming people. I am not bi, or pan or whatnot. There is a difference between the two... I am pretty sure Poe is pan, he just won’t admit it. Not that I think there is anything wrong with that. Because I don’t. I am totally pro - well - everything.”

_ What. The. Fuck. What are you saying right now?!  _ Her mind bleats at her. 

By now, Ben has parked them in the shallow end and has gone suspiciously silent. As she cannot see his face, she has no idea what his expression might be, only that he has become so quiet, all she can hear are the cicadas. 

“Anyway, that’s um… that’s just a theory. About Poe. Because I am pretty sure I caught him fooling around with Finn once, even if they both keep denying it. But yeah... I don’t like boys. Or girls.” 

Ben makes a small noise. Not quite like he is clearing his throat, and not quite the beginning of a sentence, and suddenly she is convinced he is about to drop her in the water and flee from her madness. She could not blame him, really. 

_ Words, Rey. Do you remember how to use them?  _ She mentally coaches herself. 

“I prefer older men.”

_ Nooooooooo. No that’s so much worse,  _ the sane, rational part of her mind moans, forcing her to replay her words to her own horror. 

“Wait - I don’t mean that I like  _ old _ men,” Rey quickly corrects herself. She watches several drops of water roll down the ridges of Ben’s shoulders and disappears between their bodies, where she is currently clinging to his back like he is the last lifeboat in a raging ocean. “I’m not like - a gold digger or anything like that.”

_ Okay, stop talking Rey. For the love of god, STOP.  _

But once she’s opened her mouth, she keeps going, desperate to undig the hole she is spectacularly digging herself into. Ben, for his part, has remained completely silent during her babbling, which only makes things worse. 

“I just like someone with more maturity. In their personality. Not that I’m like - into old guys or-” 

Rey cuts herself off, her cheeks brilliantly red, when Ben bursts out into the kind of loud, booming, bellyaching laughter she has not heard from him in, god - over a decade? She scowls from her perch on his back, trying very hard not to notice how pleasant the vibrations of his laughter feels against her chest and thighs, but soon she cannot help but crack a reluctant smile. Before long, they are both laughing and Ben takes a stumble in the pool, almost dunking them both. 

“It’s not funny!” Rey exclaims, slapping his shoulders, but she ruins any attempt at admonishments with her own helpless giggling. 

“Yes, it is,” Ben replies when he has finally calmed himself down. “Good to know that Poe is probably pansexual. And that you definitely don’t like boys. Or girls. And that you’re not a gold digger, which is honestly -”

“Shut. Up,” she growls in his ear and smacks him again for good measure when he starts laughing at her again. 

“No really. I’m relieved.”

“Asshole,” she grumps into the skin of his neck. 

“So,” he says, and she can tell now that the mirth has faded off and he sounds… curious. Very curious. “Who is this  _ older  _ man? Anyone I need to beat up?”

“No one,” she lies about as convincingly as Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress. “I just meant hypothetically, I would want to be with someone older. More experienced.”

That sounded a lot less suggestive in her head and she fully expects Ben to laugh at her some more, but he surprises her yet again.

Suddenly, he spins around, drawing a gasp from her and more delighted giggles. He is smiling too, his eyes light and beautiful in the orange glow of sunset. He holds her in his arms, his fingers toying with the bikini strings on her back before dragging her closer to him. She keeps her legs wrapped around his body, her smile fading to something tentative and shy when she notices how close together they are now.

Their faces are inches apart as the water gently laps against their skin.

“More experienced, eh? Definitely sounds like I should be kicking this guy’s ass,” Ben says, grinning his little mischievous grin.

“If there  _ was _ anyone’s ass to kick. Which there isn’t,” Rey denies, but she sounds weak even to herself. She can’t help it with how close together they are now. 

“You know, I don’t really believe that.”

Butterflies erupt in her stomach at the sudden low timber of his voice. One of his hands settles on her thigh and the other on her ribs. Her stomach twists with nerves, but she doesn’t want to pull away. She just hopes dad doesn’t come outside and interrupt them. Even if she’s going crazy and nothing could ever happen, she likes the warmth of his skin. They drift towards the other side of the pool, out of sight from the windows of the house.

And then, she gets a crazy idea.

Rey doesn't give herself time to question it - she just goes for it, her stomach shooting up the way someone’s might when they go bungee jumping and have just taken that perilous plummet into the unknown.

“Um… I've been meaning to tell you that I got sore again. You know, in my chest."

_ What am I doing? _ A part of her mind shrieks, while at the same time a more persistent part of her says,  _ What do I have to lose? _

Ben's doesn’t look at all surprised like she thought he would be. Rather, his jaw shifts a little, like he might be suppressing a smirk. There's a knowing glitter to his eyes she pretends not to notice while she tries not to blush and look like the complete liar that she is.

"Really."

It's not a question, the way he says it. He's still holding her close as they revolve together around the pool.

"Yeah."  _ Go on _ , that insane part of her mind urges. _ Do it. Ask him. _ "I was just wondering if you could give things a quick check again?" 

Ben stares back at her, his lips folding together as his eyes flit across her face. He totally knows. Her boobs are not sore at all, and he's going to call her on her lie. A lot of uncomfortable questions will follow. Things that she cannot remotely answer.

Instead:

The hand on her ribs pulls her a little closer and her breath stutters.

“I should show you how to check so you can do it at home.”

Rey nods, gulping. "Okay. Makes sense."

Ben smiles faintly at that.

The hand on her thigh rubs gently and then he takes his hand off her ribs, his fingers lightly tickling her stomach. Her pulse rushes in her ears as she watches the cogs turn over in his head some more. A drop of water falls off the tip of her nose and winds up on his chest. He’s so close. His breath smells like beer and him, and she just wants to burrow closer. She doesn’t quite dare, though.

“I can show you now," Ben murmurs, his voice dragging and low in a way that heats her to the core. The last word turns over, as though in question, and his dark eyes drop down to her chest.

She finds herself nodding, not trusting herself to speak.

They shift in the pool until her back meets the cool tile wall. He positions her so she’s sitting higher up on his lap, her thighs wrapped tightly around his waist. She shivers with nerves, but the weight of his hand on her thigh is warm and reassuring. She can't really believe this is happening, that he wants to...

His gaze flicks towards the house. Her father is still inside. Sometimes his calls go on for a while. Ben looks back at her, staring into her eyes in a way that is both intense and utterly arresting.

"Are you sure? We can do it at the office instead, with the nurses -"

"Won't it just be faster to do it here?"

Who the hell is this person, speaking through her lips? She sounds a little husky now. A little eager too, judging by the way Ben takes a sharp breath. The hand gripping her thigh tightens and she gasps a little at the feeling.

"Alright, sweetheart." Ben’s eyes are rapt on hers in a way that makes her feel utterly transparent. "If you want me to, I will. Relax for me.” 

Something deep inside her clenches at the hint of command in his tone and her mind turns to the porn video before she can think not to. She tries to do as he asks, letting her arms slide off him and float next to them in the water. She wants to be good for him, even if it’s just for a breast exam.

Ben leans her back until her head is resting against the side of the pool so that she’s almost lying on her back in the water with her breasts angled towards him. Her nipples are stiff under her bikini, poking through the thin material and clearly visible. He shifts her lower body even closer until her pussy is resting against his taut abdomen - that is a word she has started using more frequently - that you call a vagina a pussy because it’s sexier. They use that word a lot in porn too.

She’s delirious. This is a fantasy coming to life and she hopes Luke doesn’t come outside.

Ben’s right hand comes up and he begins gently massaging the area around her breast the way he did at the doctor’s office, not quite touching it yet. Only now, he’s going much more slowly. Almost purposeful, in his movements. Her breast shifts, her cleavage pulling together and drifting apart with each circular motion. Her skin tingles and she bites her lip between her teeth, focusing on keeping her breaths even.

“I check l-like that?” she asks, stuttering and trembling in his arms.

“Just like that,” he murmurs, his gaze fixed on his massaging hand. His other hand has clamped around her thigh, ensaring her between the pool wall and his hard, hot body.

His gaze snaps to hers then and there is a pause of air, a beat of electricity between them, and when she gives a slight nod, it is all he needs from her. 

Rey isn’t prepared for the feeling that shoots through her when his hand engulfs her entire breast. It’s much different than what he did during her appointment. He rubs gently, almost tenderly, squeezing every other beat. Her nipples stiffen even more. Ben meets her eyes, tracking the way her breath leaves her in ragged pants. He’s looking at her in a way he never has before, and she can’t help but wonder what he sees. Her upper body is almost floating on the water and he shifts, rubbing her pussy against his lower stomach.

“Is this okay?” he breathes at her, watching her expression, but for what she does not know. He looks unsure again, hesitant. Vulnerable.

Rey doesn’t want to see those emotions.

“Yes Ben,” she replies just as quietly, unable to look away from him. Holding him hostage to the pleading in her eyes.

Ben hisses a breath between his teeth and swallows thickly. The hand on her thigh begins rubbing too, squeezing harder than the hand on her breast, like he needs somewhere to vent the rush of emotions in him. She reaches a hand out of the water and brushes her fingers across his collarbone, blushing and taking little gasps of air with the steady friction of his hand against her sensitive breast. The hand on her thighs clamps down when her fingers get to his throat and she almost stops before his fingers slide up a little, gripping the inner meat of her thigh tightly. Like he might die if he lets go of her.

“To check properly,” Ben murmurs and  _ oh _ , his voice, it’s so raspy and deep, “I need to get under your top.”

He meets her eyes, waiting for her permission.

“O-okay. Okay.” Rey nods quickly, her head spinning.

Ben pulls her top up until her breasts pop out. His eyes darken, his pupils swallowing up his irises. His gaze is ravenous, his mouth parting with a slight intake of air. His lips are bright red and wet from the pool water. Drops of water drip down his chest, across his flat nipples and below. Rey follows them with shaky fingers, running circles over his clavicles. In reality, she is more self-conscious than ever of her small breasts. Even her nipples are tiny, all pink and hard from his ministrations.

Ben doesn’t seem to mind. He licks his lips and then resumes massaging her breast in his large hand. His other hand slowly travels up the underside of her thigh until it’s resting on her

bum. Suddenly, he squeezes both hands at the same time and a small whine tears from her lips, her hips arching against him of their own volition.

“That’s my good girl,” he whispers as though he does not know quite what he is saying, his eyes hazy and hooded. 

Rey almost moans, but somehow staunches the sound. 

He moves on to the other breast, rubbing incessantly. Then, he pulls down, until his two fingers enclose her nipple. He gently squeezes his fingers together, pinching her nipple until it pokes out between his fingers, pink and raw and aching. He does this again and again until she feels like she’s going to go crazy from her wet she’s become.

“ _ Mmmf _ ,” she whimpers, her hips flexing again.

Some of his hair has fallen in his face, the locks wet and dripping. She’s never found him sexier than in this moment. She trails her fingers up to the side of his face and he leans against them, his eyes closing briefly at her touch.

“I want you to do this every night. Just like I’m doing,” he instructs her in a gravelly voice that goes straight to her cunt. “Then you can show me during your next appointment to make sure you have the technique right.”

“You’ll be doing my appointment again?” Rey rasps with surprise, her fingers stilling.

His eyes open and a crooked little smile twists his plush lips. “I wouldn’t let anyone else touch you, baby.”

The way he says this makes her hips snap up, her clit rubbing against his stomach in a bid for relief. Ben doesn’t say anything when she does this, but he does pinch her nipple even harder, a pleased growl rumbling up through his chest.

Suddenly, he leans over her, until his face is hovering over hers. His nose brushes hers softly, his lips so achingly close to hers that she hopes he does it. That he kisses her like she’s been wanting him to for a long time now. There’s a wild need in his eyes that she’s never seen before and it makes her whimper.

“Do that again,” Ben whispers, dark and rough.

Rey is lost. There is no world beyond the two of them, here in this pool, where the glow of sunset makes what they’re doing feel like it’s happening in someone else’s dream.

Slowly and shyly, she cants her hips, rubbing herself against his cousin’s taut stomach. When she goes to pull away, the hand on her ass squeezes like iron and then he’s guiding her, rubbing her up and down against him in a heady rhythm. Her breath catches, her eyelashes flutter and then his breath is in her ear.

“Fuck you’re beautiful,” he mumbles. His teeth catch on her earlobe and  _ tug _ .

“ _ Ben _ ,” she whispers, lost to the dragging sensation of her clit rubbing against hard muscle.

He kisses her jaw, then her cheek, his hand kneading her ass while the other squeezes and tugs on her breast.

“Tell me this okay,” he says - nay,  _ demands _ . His voice is a broken thing, rough and cracked against the shell of her ear. “Tell me I’m not losing my fucking mind right now and…”

“It’s okay,” Rey whispers to him, opening her eyes to that endless blue sky. “I-I want this…”

Ben groans, his hand gripping her ass hard and sliding her pelvis down until she sinks a bit in the water. Now her pussy is resting against…

Ben groans again, the sound vibrating into her skin and he’s moving her faster against what can only be his very hard and very large cock. Rey’s lips part and she moans, smothering the sound into the side of his neck. Then his face is turning towards her, his hungry mouth seeking. His nose brushes hers before their lips crash together, wet and desperate. Her tits brush against his bare chest and they both moan in acknowledgement, his mouth moving more urgently against hers. His tongue slips in between her lips and she readily greets him, her tongue gliding against her as he takes the lead.

He’s a really good kisser, but she’s not really surprised by that. She’s not really sure what she is right now, only that her cunt is throbbing violently, and his cock is nestled in between the lips of her pussy, dragging just the right way with their desperate movements.

Ben breaks away suddenly, gasping against her cheek as she begins rubbing herself against him on her own. He pinches her nipple hard. She keens in his ear and he swears hotly into her skin, repeating the motion while he caresses her ass under the water, his fingers slipping under the material so he can grip her skin to skin. 

“Experienced like this?” He suddenly murmurs into the skin of her throat before planting several wet, lingering kisses there. 

It takes Rey a moment to remember what he is talking about and then she blushes. He  _ knew _ . Of course he did. He’s always two steps ahead of her. 

“Y-yes,” she stutters into his ear, her vision whitening when he gives her a particularly rough stroke against her sensitized clit. His teeth nip her jaw at her reply and then he is kissing her again and she forgets what it was they were talking about. 

Everything is happening so quickly; they’re like two atoms, reacting against one another until they consume each other whole. She does not have time to feel shocked that this is happening - really and truly happening - and nor does she want to take time to stop and chat about it because then it will end. Reason will return and then afterwards.... They won’t even have a good memory from it. She just needs this. Just for a little while. Just for right now. 

“I need to make sure these pretty little nipples are healthy,” Ben rasps into her ear, rough and ragged, and she is sucked back into his orbit and out of the land of real-life and consequences. Just for now, just for a little while. “Can you let me do that, baby?”

“You don’t think they’re too small?” she asks, unable to help herself.

“Fuck no.” He nuzzles her cheek, the tip of his nose cool against her burning skin. “You’re perfect, Rey.”

She closes her eyes and moans quietly, her clit throbbing now as he rubs it rhythmically against his hot length. His lips brush her cheek in barely-there kisses, light and quick, making her pant weakly against him.

“Y-yes Ben. You can check.”

Ben presses his nose against her neck, seeming to breathe her in, and then he descends down. Her hand slides up the nape of his neck, fingers tangling through his dark locks of hair when he wraps his lips around her nipple and  _ sucks _ .

“ _ Oh _ .” The sound she makes is too reductive to truly encapsulate the feeling that goes through her, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing does.

Ben keeps rubbing her cunt against him, water splashing gently around them. Her back arches, until her tits are high up in the air, at the perfect presentation for his hungry mouth. The hand resting on her ass moves inwards and then his fingers brush the flimsy aqua material covering her pussy.

“Here, Rey? Can I touch you here too?” he rasps breathlessly into her flesh.

“Mhm,” she moans out, thinking her in head  _ fuck yes, touch me wherever you want _ .

His fingers worm under and then he buries one inside her quivering cunt. Her mouth falls open in surprise, a moan tearing from her lips that might have been too loud had she had it in her to care. His fingers are much thicker than hers and he knows just what to do with them. He pumps his digit into her, curling it up every other stroke. She’s almost sobbing with need, her fingers fisting his hair and tugging.

“I need you to cum,” Ben whispers harshly, sucking and rubbing his face against her tits like she’s made of crack. “I need it so  _ fucking _ bad.”

“Keep...keep going,” Rey breathes out, her hips bucking against his cock when his finger starts working her faster. He adds a second after a few seconds, letting her get used to the stretch before he resumes his frantic pace.

“You’re so  _ tight _ . I don’t even know if I’ll fit inside you, baby. I’m going to stretch you out  _ so much _ .”

Rey whines at his words, earning her a little nip to the underside of her breast. From what she can feel of his cock, she doesn’t know if he will fit either. Just the thought of them doing  _ that _ almost makes her come on the spot.

Then, Ben takes her nipple between his teeth, using his tongue to flick and stroke against it. Her hips snap against him hard. Yes, oh  _ yes _ . He is experienced, just like she knew he would be. The thought of him doing this with other women is vaguely discomforting, but she manages to push it from her mind. For now, it’s just them, just the way she has always wanted them to be. Just for now, just for a little while…

Ben moans into her flesh at the desperate cant of her hips against his and then he’s moving her harder and faster against him, both their breaths leaving them in ragged pulls for air. His tongue flicks faster against the sensitive bud of her nipple, his fingers fucking her at a feverish pace underwater.

She’s going to come. Any second now. This is the hottest thing that’s ever happened to her and she still can’t quite believe it’s real.

“B-Ben,” she rasps needily, gently pulling his hair.

“You’re doing so good, baby.” He moves away from her tits and presses soft little kisses into her cheeks and jaw, leaning up to watch her slowly come apart in his arms. His fingers are slamming into her now, his hips grinding against her like he wishes it was his cock inside her instead of his fingers. His eyes are hooded and so dark they’re almost black, his gaze rapt upon all the facial expressions she can’t help in this moment of utter need. “That’s it, baby. That’s my good girl. Come for me, sweetheart.”

She preens at his praise and she’s right there, she’s so,  _ soclosenowanysecondandshewill _ -

Then, in a cruel clash of Fate, the patio door swishes open.

For a second, Rey and Ben stare at each other in wide-eyed shock. Then, they spring apart, her insides throbbing with the dissatisfaction of not being able to finish. She sinks under the water, knowing she doesn’t have time to fix her top. Ben moves a respectable distance away, adjusting his shorts and pushing out a shuddering breath. Their eyes meet again and they both pause in their movements, each of them caught by the redness of their cheeks and the desire reflecting back in each of their eyes.

Then, Luke is leaning over the deck railing to tell them he has to go into work early tomorrow and Ben should head home soon. They look away from each other quickly and Rey makes sure to keep her upper body below the edge of the pool, out of sight.

“Sounds good,” they echo back at him and eye each other guiltily when they both realize their voices sound all wrong.

Luke, thankfully, doesn’t appear to notice a thing. He heads back into the house and when the door slams closed, Rey pushes out a sigh of relief.

Ben looks away as she adjusts her bikini bottoms first, but when she goes to fix her top, one of his large hands enters her view. He drifts closer to her and then, he is fixing her top for her. His face is still flushed, his eyelashes wet with pool water and nearly brushing his cheeks. A fussy, determined look has come over his face and he reties her strings so her top is sitting properly. Her hands sink back into the water and he moves closer, adjusting the cups so they hide everything away again.

“I -” Rey goes to say, her insides hot and faintly throbbing with need, but then Ben leans down and she cuts herself off from speech. 

The movement is too much like a knee-jerk reaction for it to be planned and his lips are on hers again, wet and warm. The drag of his mouth against her makes her think that despite the interruption, things might not be done between them after all. She closes her eyes, a soft sound escaping her as he pulls her bottom lip between his but keeps his tongue to himself this time.

Ben pulls away before she can really respond. She can’t read his emotions anymore. His face is carefully blank as he looks away from her to the edge of the pool.

“I better go,” he says quietly.

“Right.” Rey’s hands fidget together in the water.

He brushes her hip as he passes her, not bothering with the stairs and she watches as he lifts himself out of the water and onto the side of the pool.

She stays in the pool after he leaves, well into the evening. The stars are out by the time she gets out, her hands and feet pruned. Her father is already asleep on his recliner in front of the television. Without a word, Rey turns off the tv before going up to her room.

She leans her back against her closed bedroom door, staring at her laptop on her nightstand. Rather than grabbing it and booting on the same old video, she stays where she is, her back against her door and her feet spread apart. She closes her eyes as she dips her hand into her bikini bottoms, before hissing with impatience and yanking them off altogether. 

She relives the feel of Ben’s lips, his tongue, his fingers. His cock. She knows how big it is now. She knows what he sounds like when he says her name at the same time his fingers are buried inside her. She knows what his hungry kisses feel like.

Rey comes only a handful of minutes later, a slick mess dripping down her legs.

As the weekend wanes to an end and a new week begins, she dutifully does Ben’s recommended breast exams. Every single night. They always end the same way, with her fingers crammed deep inside her and his name on her lips when the crest comes.


	5. Smile Like a Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a cabinet under the microwave that has a lock on it. As far as Rey knows, Luke has never used the lock because he has never had any reason to. Other teenagers might sneak their parents’ liquor supply, but she has never had much tolerance or interest in drinking. 
> 
> Despite the aversion, she opens the cabinet, peering inside to the dusty collection of bottles.
> 
> Vodka. Whiskey. Vermouth. Scotch. Some old bottles of wine, gifts from colleagues in the hospital. A couple of mickeys of ouzo and some other European alcohol she has never heard of, much less ever sampled. 
> 
> Rey picks the vodka. 
> 
> Rey makes an impulsive decision, haunted by the ghosts of both the departed and her own lingering regrets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some annnnngst here for ya! 
> 
> Cause I mean, come on - it couldn't be that easy, could it? ;)
> 
> Really wanted to establish some plot here and the nature of Rey's relationship with her father. Now - I love Luke Skywalker, but in this story, he is a broken man. He has lost a lot and as a single dad, he struggles with raising a daughter on his own. Just want to be clear that Luke is not meant to be a villain, but he makes some pretty stupid parenting mistakes in this story and from Rey's point of view, that can look harsh and uncaring. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy this instalment and... more porn to come soon!!!! :D

She is fourteen years old in this memory.

It’s cold, windy, and the scent of the ocean is strong on the air; salty and with a hint of fishiness that typically precludes what passes for fall in this part of the country. If they were at the beach, the white caps would be high and the sand gritty with moisture.

But they’re not at the beach today. The pool cover flaps with the wind, the backyard oddly vacuous with the pool closed up for the season. The yew hedges stand tall behind them, obscuring the fence of the neighbours' yard. She’s glad she thought to bring clips to keep her parchment attached to the easel, or else this would not be going well.

“Stop moving around so much.” She looks up from her drawing pad, her eyes narrowed, and her bottom lip squished with concentration. Her hair is tied back in a plait and she shivers, wishing she had worn a heavier sweater.

Across from her, sitting on top of an old wooden bar stool she found in the basement, is Ben. He stops adjusting his shirt, his mouth pulled into a frown as he regards her with exasperation.

“You picked a great day to do this, you know.” Ben arches an eyebrow as the wind chooses that moment to agree with his moodiness. The collar of his shirt flips out like he’s doing a bad imitation of Elvis.

He reaches up without breaking eye contact with her to fix it.

“Stop scowling.”

“So I can’t do anything I like then.”

Her eyes snap to his again, only now he’s smirking at her.

“Hilarious,” she drawls and then ducks down to erase the slope of his jaw. 

Really, it’s because she’s smiling too, but she does not want the jerk to see it.

“Remind me why I agreed to this again?” Ben sits taller on the stool, his scowl quick to reappear. They’re in her backyard, out in the grass by the closed-up pool. It’s cool outside, the wind tousling his dark locks around his head.

Her portrait has caught his hair billowing with the wind and his eyes have that faraway cast that she secretly finds alluring, though this is an observation she would never share with him, not even under the pain of death. She thinks she might have caught enough of the essence of that look so that she feels satisfied at least with this part of the drawing.

“It’s a surprise for Aunt Leia.” She sucks her tongue off the roof of her mouth as she examines her drawing with a critical eye before looking back at Ben and impatiently waiting for him to stop fidgeting. 

He notices her glaring at him and sighs, slumping forward on the stool. “She already has photos of me, you know. Like a million all over the house.”

“But this will be different.” 

She leans towards the parchment to resketch his jaw again, determined to get it just right. The eyes are close, but something is still missing. Maybe in the brows.

“Hope you’re putting a helmet over my face because you’ll be doing everyone a favour, believe me.”

She stops drawing, her mouth forming an offended “o”. 

Ben stares back at her sullenly. His lips keep folding together in an unconscious gesture of insecurity and she watches his hands tap an unknown tune against his thigh, almost as though he does not know what to do with them.

“You really have no idea, do you?” She is staring at him with something very much close to adoration. He opens his mouth, likely to dish out yet another sarcastic comment, but the words are already out of her mouth before she can think of a different way to say them. “You’re gorgeous, Ben.”

Her face is red – she can feel the blush rapidly spreading across her cheeks. She had not meant to say it that way. She had not meant to sound so damned sincere, either. But she absolutely meant the words themselves, that much she knows. Her earnestness might have gravely embarrassed her, but she doesn’t regret telling him because he can’t possibly think he’s ugly. She won’t let him.

With as much asperity as she can muster, she lowers her pencil to the paper again, ignoring Ben’s obvious astonishment to continue her drawing. Lately, he’s spending far too much time at school for her liking, so she has to take advantage of their afternoon together to get this done. Then she can get the drawing framed and give it to Aunt Leia as a Christmas present. 

They always do Christmas in November, ever since her mother passed away.

“Close your mouth,” she says, with just her eyes peeping over the top of her easel in her sheepishness.

Ben promptly obeys her and doesn’t say a word after this. The rest of the afternoon passes in a comfortable quiet and once the drawing is completed and he is released from his perch, he comes over to examine the finished product. 

He just stares and stares at the sketch, until she gets nervous and pokes him in the ribs.

“It’s really great. Like, really.”

She beams at him, until he shakes his head and looks away, but not before she spies the pink of his cheeks and the pleased little smile on his face.

A few weeks later, they’re all sitting down for Christmas dinner and the picture is predictably adored by Aunt Leia. Even Luke gruffly tells her that it’s good. When Aunt Leia asks Ben where they should hang it, he suggests the hallway by the front door, much to everyone’s surprise.

The drawing replaces several old photographs of Ben and his father, where it will remain.

*

Rey’s ringtone goes off just before noon,  _ Pulp _ bleating off the walls of the living room before she grabs her phone off the coffee table. She frowns down at a number she does not recognize before answering.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Rey?” a boisterous male voice says on the other end.

“Um, this is she.”

Rey is secretly pleased with herself. She’s always wanted to answer the phone like this, after overhearing Aunt Leia do it this way. She has always found the greeting sophisticated and adult. It’s like putting on Aunt Leia’s pearls and her dressy pumps and pretending that she’s an upper-class socialite. Something she can try on, something she can borrow, only to quietly return whence it came and never mention to anyone.

“Hello Rey!” the man says so loudly Rey winces and pulls the phone away from her ear. “My name is Mitaka. I’m friends with your cousin, Ben. We’ve known each other since university - back when he was still in the music program, of course.”

“Oh. Okay.” She’s never heard of a Mitaka, but then again Ben doesn’t really talk about his brief stint in musical studies before he switched majors to med school.

“He told me you’re looking for a part-time job,” Mitaka continues, in the same cheerful tone.

She rears back and she folds her leg under her on the couch, staring down at the carpet with a look of perplexity.

“Ben did?”

“Yep! He dropped by my studio yesterday and passed along your info. So, are you still looking?”

Her stomach relocates to her toes and her face flushes hot. Now, all she can think about is the way Ben’s mouth was wrapped around her nipples, the way his finger curled inside her, and his hungry, plying kisses…

“Rey? You still there?”

She clears her throat, and closes her eyes with embarrassment, before stuttering out a quick reply. “Yep! Um, that’s right, I’m still looking.”

Rey sits up straighter on the couch, unconsciously adjusting her sweater even though she’s home alone and Mitaka cannot possibly see her through the phone. She barely remembers telling Ben about wanting to look for work, though after what happened in her pool, she doesn’t think she can be blamed for that. 

“Perfect! I own an art studio downtown and I need someone to help me schedule bookings. Ben mentioned you’re very reliable and looking to get into the art scene. He also might have mentioned you’re a natural talent yourself.”

“Well, I…I don’t know about that...” Rey trails off with a heavy blush painting her cheeks red. Something bright and warm flutters across her chest and then she’s smiling, so wide it almost hurts her face.

“Oh, no need to be modest. Ben was singing your praises and I knew if that grump thought so highly of you, I ought to give you a call,” Mitaka says, so cheerfully that she can’t help but chuckle in agreement.

“That would be – well, that would be really great.” Rey is gripping the armrest of the couch so tightly she hears the fabric protest.

“Fabulous!” he exclaims and she thinks that yes, this is fabulous. This is fucking  _ amazing _ . “Ben gave me your email, so I am going to put together an orientation date and send that to you so you can plug that into your calendar. I’m very excited to have you start with us, Rey. We’re really busy this time of year and I just lost my front desk person.”

“Great. I am excited too,” Rey replies, not quite believing that this is really happening.

Soon, they end the call and she sits on the couch for a few moments, utterly stunned. Her doctor’s appointment is this afternoon and she’s been a mixture of nerves and excitement all morning. She has not heard a peep from Ben since what she is dubbing in her mind as the “pool incident” and she keeps fearing that he will go back to ignoring her again.

Now though... Ben got her a job. At an art studio. He told his friend that she was reliable, that she was  _ talented _ . 

Rey grins and then she kicks her legs, giggling and screeching with excitement. She bounds up off the couch and races upstairs to put some make-up on her face before she leaves for her appointment. She never usually wears make-up, since she hates the feeling of it on her skin, but she’s going to wear some today. As she applies about five layers of mascara too many, she slows for a second, her gaze growing unfocused as she peers out the window in her bathroom to the pool in the backyard below.

_ I wouldn’t let anyone else touch you… _

She is going to thank Ben for finding her this amazing job and maybe… Maybe she’ll kiss him again, too.

*

“Rhylen Organa?”

Rey looks up from her phone, flipping through Instagram posts of local artists she loves, to find a friendly female nurse staring back at from the door. She frowns at hearing her full first name, her eyes brows wrinkling at the foreignness of hearing it said out loud. Everyone usually calls her Rey. 

Then, remembering why she is here, she gets up out of her seat and crosses the room to greet the nurse.

"Hi," Rey says, smiling uncertainly.

“My name is Jessa, I’ll be seeing you today,” the nurse says by way of introduction. She has Rey’s medical chart in one manicured hand and reaches out with her free hand.

Rey shakes with her, feeling utterly awkward in her limbs. The bright joy that has buoyed her every step today flickers a little, until dull disappointment fills her gut with lead. On their way down the hall, she does not see Ben anywhere, nor does she hear his telltale baritone through the walls of the other patients’ rooms.

Jessa leads her to a different room than the one she was in with Ben last time.

“Is – er - Dr. Organa not in today?” Rey asks, remembering at the last second to use his professional designation.

“He stepped out about an hour ago,” Jessa replies, smiling over her shoulder at her. She has pretty blue eyes, light blonde hair, and a vague English accent. 

Rey immediately dislikes her for absolutely no logical reason she can think of. It's just a feeling and once it's there, she can't seem to shake it.

As the nurse closes the door behind them, she eyes the examination table with apprehension. There are stirrups on the table and next to it, atop a smaller table on wheels, there is what appears to be an extremely long q-tip, a menacing looking metal instrument, and a long plastic cylinder.

“If you want to get changed into the gown right there, we can get the procedure started.” The nurse - Jessa - goes to the sink and washes her hands.

“Right,” Rey replies faintly. She stares at the long q-tip and gulps.

*

When Rey gets home an hour later, there is a note on the dining room table and a twenty-dollar bill sitting next to it. She knows it’s for pizza without reading it. These little notes are Luke’s calling card, his chicken-scratch cursive left behind on hundreds of post-it notes and scraps of paper over the course of her childhood. He could text instead, but he never does unless there’s an emergency.

It's always these little notes. Always these subtle avoidances.

_ Sorry kid, got called into work.  _

_ Here kid, order a pizza.  _

_ Don’t wait up tonight kid, I’ll be working late.  _

_ Hey kiddo, I know you had that play tonight but… _

Rey is coming to the abrupt realization that she hates his notes.

This musing has a frightfully adult undertone to it and she traces the curled edges of the square green post-it note, her eyes are filled with vague loathing. But maybe it’s better that he isn’t home. She is glad there is no one here to witness the black mood she's in. 

The studio job and Mitaka’s jubilant personality are almost forgotten as she leaves her purse hanging on the hook by the front door. She does not read Luke’s note, nor does she pluck up the money he left her for dinner. There is a vague ache inside her from the speculum. The pap test was quick and only mildly uncomfortable. Jessa was kind, in a detached sort of way that only made her dislike her more. The test would have been far worse if she still had her hymen of course. Her short stint with horseback riding lessons took care of that years ago. 

She should be happy Ben was not there to do the test. She should be relieved.

But she’s not.

The first place Rey goes to is the living room, where an iPod is set up with the surround sound speakers mounted around the room. Years ago, she and Ben created a playlist together on it, so when she hits the shuffle button and  _ Vancouver Sleep Clinic _ comes on, she can’t help but tear up a little at the familiar piano notes. It’s all minor-key – she and Ben’s favourite – and she taps out the notes against her leg as she moves on to the kitchen. 

There is a cabinet under the microwave that has a lock on it. As far as Rey knows, Luke has never used the lock because he has never had any reason to. Other teenagers might sneak their parents’ liquor supply, but she has never had much tolerance or interest in drinking. 

Despite the aversion, she opens the cabinet, peering inside to the dusty collection of bottles.

Vodka. Whiskey. Vermouth. Scotch. Some old bottles of wine, gifts from colleagues in the hospital. A couple of mickeys of ouzo and some other European alcohol she has never heard of, much less ever sampled. 

Rey picks the vodka. 

Rose once told her vodka is the easiest kind of liquor to get used to and she’s not about to experiment with the others. She doesn’t like alcohol, but right now, she knows she needs a buffer between her and the dark hedges of her mind. The cap comes off easily, which leads her to think that Luke has been sampling the liquor cabinet himself. A good third of the bottle is gone already. It won’t take her much, though. She never drinks and she has not eaten since noon.

Rey tips the bottle back and takes a tentative sip. Liquid fire burns down her throat, but by the third sip, she can barely taste it anymore. She goes back to the living room and now the song has changed to something by the  _ Yeah Yeah Yeahs _ , some dreary love song that’s heavy on the drums and cliche heartbreak.

“‘ _ They don’t love you like I love you’ _ ,” Rey sings under her breath, walking in slow circles around her living room.

She glances around at the vacant furniture, at the sparse walls, and the dated drapes that need to be replaced. This house feels like a showroom sometimes. The furniture, curtains, pictures, plants – all of it just for show. No one really lives here, she thinks. Not with the ghost of her mother lingering at every turn.

“Why didn’t we move?” she says out loud to no one, approaching a picture of her and Luke.

They’re at some sort of monument she does not recall. She might be ten or eleven in the photo. The pose looks forced, Luke’s arm over her shoulder perfunctory and her smile fake and plastic. 

She is willing to bet all her savings that he took his arm off of her as soon as the photo was snapped.

After taking a deep gulp of the vodka, Rey moves on to the sitting room that is adjacent to the dining room and main foyer. They never use this room. The couch is white and flawless, something her mother picked out years ago. The vodka swishes in the bottle with each sip and soon Rey is stumbling around the lower level of the house, drunk out of her mind. She picks up another photo off of the buffet in the dining room, this one of Luke and her mother when they just got married.

Her father looks so happy there. Happier than she has ever seen him.

“Guess your little accident really put a damper on things,” Rey slurs, her voice echoing in the empty house.

She puts the photo down. At least, she’s fairly certain she does because, in a blink of an eye, she’s suddenly back at the front door. This must be what black-out drunk is, she blearily muses. She does not remember how she got here, quite possibly because she’s consumed a good portion of the bottle already. She has her phone now when she definitely didn't a moment ago (or possibly several moments ago), and the mostly empty bottle of vodka sways precariously in her grasp. She feels nauseous, tired, and like the floor is tipping up and down. Her elbow knocks into the wall when she turns the corner, hard enough to bruise, but she does not feel it.

Somehow, Rey faceplants on the couch in the living room instead of on the floor, and then there is a dial tone in her ear. Is she calling someone? She does not remember dialling anyone’s number.

On the third ring, the call goes to voicemail.

“ _ At the tone, please record your message for _ …” Then, following the polite robot comes a much more familiar voice. “…Doctor Benjamin Organa.”

The voicemail beeps and Rey takes in a deep breath. There is a blank slate here. A parchment, in which she can transcribe whatever she wants without interruption. 

And the floodgates open.

“Hi, asshole,” Rey says, through the thickness of insobriety and her own tears. When did she start crying? “Missed you at our app-oint-ment.”

Each syllable is stressed, and she hiccups, though she can’t tell if that is because she might need to vomit, or because of how hard she is crying.

“Jessa is –  _ hup _ \- nice, by the way. She’s got moxie, as the kids say.”

Rey does not really have a plan with this. Until just a few seconds ago, she did not even realize she was calling Ben.

“Guess you got –  _ hup _ \- what you wanted –  _ hup _ \- in the pool. Good to know where we –  _ hup _ \- stand.” She pauses here, deliberating what she should say next. “Also it’s rude to… to do what we did and ignore someone. Didn’t you –  _ hup _ – learn that at the asshole –  _ hup _ – academy you went to or did they just teach –  _ hup _ – you how to become a yuppy dick.”

_ That’s good _ , her drunk brain thinks.  _ Super intelligible. _

The tears come like a deluge and she leans into the mouthpiece, her lower lip trembling and mascara running all over her face.

“I’m sorry,” Rey whispers into the phone with tears clogging her voice. “I’m sorry, Ben. I’ll –  _ hup _ \- leave you alone now.”

She thinks she hangs up. Maybe. 

Rey drops her phone and then it’s lodged somewhere in the couch cushions underneath her. The bottle drops to the floor, spilling the rest of its contents into the carpet, but she hardly notices or cares. Picking at a loose thread on the couch, she flops over on her back and immediately regrets this ill-informed move. The world begins to spin, and she knows she is going to vomit the second before she leans over the side of the couch to do just that.

Then, the world fades to merciful black.

*

Someone is saying her name. 

There is a hand on her face and one on her ribs, gently shaking her. Rey mumbles unhappily, shuffling away from them to burrow back into her bed. Although come to think of it, this does not really feel like her bed. The surface is hard and uneven for one. Kind of like the couch downstairs in the living room.

“Rey? Sweetheart? Wake up.”

“… _ yuppy _ …” she murmurs, twisting away to shove her face in between the couch cushions. Something cold and hard smooshes against her face and when she peels one eye open, she realizes it’s her phone.

And a few realizations hit her all at once.

She is severely dehydrated, and her mouth tastes like sour vomit. She is in the living room, on the couch. She is leaning her face against her phone because that is where she dropped it after…

“Oh  _ no _ ,” she moans, her temples pounding in the worst headache of her life.

“Welcome back, Rey.” 

At the sound of his voice, she tries to pull herself into a sitting position. Her stomach lurches and she groans weakly, subsiding back into the stuffy cushions.

“Are you going to puke again?” Ben asks. Yes, because of course, he is here. Now, when she absolutely does not want him to be. She can barely remember what she said to him on his voicemail, but she doubts it was a recipe for shepherd’s pie.

“Oh _ no, no, no _ ,” she repeats. Her face feels like it’s covered in plaster and her elbow is throbbing with pain. When the hell did she do that?

“I’m going to help you sit up. I have a bucket here, okay?” 

The same hand from before rubs soothingly on her back and she is momentarily reminded of a much happier memory – Ben rubbing her back by the pool, Ben kissing her and…

“Oh my god,” she gurgles out. There is soft laughter above her and if she had it in her, she would smack him upside the head.

“Ready, sweetheart?”

“No,” she grumbles, but he is pulling her up anyways.

The world spins madly for a moment, and she thinks she might vomit again before things somehow right themselves. Ben’s face swims into view. He is kneeling next to the couch and then she is looking past him into the rest of the room. The music has been turned off and it’s quiet in the house. The living room light is on, but the hall light isn’t. She can tell it’s dark out, but she has no idea what time it is. She feels like she’s been hit with a truck, dragged twelve blocks, and then dropped to the bottom of the ocean.

Ben is not smiling, despite his earlier laughter, and she tries to jog her fuzzy memory for what

she said on his voicemail. He’s wearing nice clothes; a dress shirt and dress pants, though her vision is too bleary to make out the colours. His cologne is light and pleasant; rain, mint, and him. The only sign that something is amiss is the fact that his hair is in wild disarray like he’s been tugging on it for the last hour or so.

Rey raises a shaky finger and pokes him in the chest. 

“I’m mad at you.” She makes sure to lean away when she says this because she’s certain her breath can’t be anything he wants to smell at the moment.

“I know.” Ben looks down at her shirt. He reaches up to straighten her collar and then shakes his head. “I want to bring you upstairs so we can get you cleaned up. Think you’ll make it up there?”

Rey looks past him and sees a conspicuous wet spot on the carpet right by the couch. Then, she smells the carpet cleaner. 

She closes her eyes, slumping against the couch with humiliation. A puff of air blows softly at her face and when she looks up, Ben’s lips are folding together in thought. He peers at her, trying to stow away some emotion she can barely trace there.

Then, his jaw shifts and when he speaks, his voice is hard. Almost accusatory. “Do I want to know where you got the alcohol?”

Ah. He’s mad too. Rey supposes she’s earned that.

“Where do you think?” She lurches forward and Ben stiffens, his hands reaching out to catch her, but she’s already gotten to her feet and pushed past him. “Thanks for cleaning my puke up, by the way. Guess that makes us even.”

“Rey,” he sounds tired now, but she doesn’t look back. She’s concentrating too hard on walking to the stairs without falling on her face. She must still be drunk, and it’s not at all fun like her friends said it would be. It’s fucking  _ awful _ .

“ _ Rey _ ,” Ben repeats, all strained like he’s the one who feels like his insides might like to wriggle themselves out through his oesophagus.

“Yes?” She pauses by the staircase, mostly because she does not think she can walk up them on her own. But there is a small part of her that wants to hear what he might have to say. That might want to fix this before it can all fall apart on her again.

Ben approaches her through the foyer and comes to stand before her. His fingers are cool and dry when he wipes at her face.

“You’re a fucking mess.” He rubs at what can only be mascara. She vaguely recalls sobbing her eyes out earlier and kind of wants a giant hole to open in the floor so she can escape his regard.

His eyes meet hers finally, all somber and brown.

“Help me?” Rey says, as quietly as possible.

Ben purses his lips, but he’s gentle when he lifts her into his arms, taking care to cradle her head against his chest and not jostle her around too much. He tells her to warn him if she’s going to puke again and when she mutters a petulant “if you're lucky”, there is a rumble in his chest that she knows to be laughter.

Soon, they’re upstairs, under the unforgiving glare of the bathroom light.

“I won’t tell Luke you got into his booze,” Ben says, that fussy, determined look back on his face as he uses a make-up wipe to get the mascara off her face.

“Thanks.”

Her breath is fresh now and minty with her toothpaste. She sits on the counter of her bathroom in a pair of old sweatpants and a t-shirt, averting her eyes from the bright florescent light. She still feels like garbage, but at least she can’t taste vomit anymore.

Ben leans away when he’s done, examining her face the way she does a sketch she’s working on, and then he throws the wipe away.

“I came as soon as I got your message,” he tells her like this is vital information that she needs to know. 

Something in her perks up, but she squashes it before she can get too ahead of herself. Again.

“So, about that…” Rey says through a throat that feels like she has gargled broken glass.

“It was nothing I didn’t deserve.” Ben looks somber all at once, like he ran over her dog.

“I don’t even remember what I said.” But she remembers enough. He looks at her like he doesn’t really believe her, yet she pushes on regardless. “I thought after the other day, in the pool, things between us might…”

“Rey.” He looks remorseful and about a million other things she doesn’t want to acknowledge right now. “We shouldn’t have done that. Things went way too far - I don’t even know what came over me except that… It doesn’t matter. It can’t happen again. After last time, at the cottage - I thought I had this under control but I clearly don’t. I also should not be administering your doctor appointments. It’s inappropriate and this –  _ us _ – we just can’t. This is all my fault.”

Rey stares back at Ben in disbelief, feeling for the first time since she peeled her eyes open on the couch that she’s actually awake.

“You regret it.” 

The words are dull when they come out. Dull, with the promise of fury behind them, like the summer storms that frequent this part of the world.

“I should,” Ben murmurs, and it won’t be until the next morning that she’ll replay his words and realize that this did not mean he actually  _ did _ . 

She has to tilt her head back to meet his gaze and she’s suddenly tired. Exhausted. Done.

“I think you should go.” Rey trembles with it; her dismissal of him hurts more than anything he could ever say to her.

“Okay.” Ben nods once, resigned and repentant all in one. 

He walks out of the bathroom, his footsteps as plodding and graceless as they have always been, even when they were younger and he was still acclimating to his long limbs. She wants to recant her words, to call him back, but her exhaustion stills her voice. 

Rey follows him out, but then he stops halfway across her dark bedroom. 

His broad back is heaving like he just ran up a flight of stairs and she pauses too, just behind him, her mouth opening, though she has no idea what is that she is going to say because then he is turning back to her and before she can take another breath, he has crossed the distance between them and his mouth is on hers. She exhales sharply, her eyes still open while his are closed and furrowed with something that looks very close to pain. His hand is in her hair and his lips are warm against hers. Her entire body stiffens, and she does not know whether to push him away or pull him closer but she never gets a chance to decide.

Ben draws away like she’s made of fire and the sound he makes is so full of grief that it takes her breath away. His hand is gone from her hair, then he’s backing away from her with eyes so dark she can hardly tell their colour. She makes a sound - perhaps the beginnings of his name - and then he’s practically running out of her room.

A moment later, the front door slams closed.

Rey stands in her room, drawing for air like he has gone and taken all the oxygen with him. Like a tornado just swept through her room and she’s the sole survivor, left adrift in this dark sea of uncertainty.

Her pillow is still damp from her tears when she wakes up the next morning.


	6. The Whole Mess of Roads We're Now On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Should I just take this then?” Ben murmurs. His lips are so close to hers that all she can see are the warm brown of his eyes. His stethoscope becomes unbalanced on his massive shoulders, and when it falls to the floor neither of them appears to notice. “Is that what I should do, Rey?”
> 
> Her heart flutters in her chest. “If you want to. Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All aboard the smut train!!! 
> 
> Warning for some doctor/patient below (that is not the focus of this story but it is apart of the beginning of their sexual relationship), and some Dom/Sub undertones. Although Rey technically does not have her hymen, she loses her virginity in this chapter so heads up for that as well. 
> 
> Hope you all enjoy your Sunday of porn!!!! Your comments, as always, are greatly appreciated <3

She is seventeen in this memory. Mid May, Friday night. 

Her mouth tastes like vodka and raspberries, and her friends are huddled around her, each looking more fearful than the last. Her bedroom light has been hastily turned off and they are listening intently at her door, half drunk and definitely terrified. 

And predictably, they’re arguing. 

“I’m not going down there. I won rock, paper, scissors fair and square.”

“ _ Fine _ . But I’m not doing it either. Have you seen what happens in horror movies? The Black man is always the first to die.”

“Well, it’s Rey’s house, so shouldn’t she do it?”

“Wow. Thanks Poe.”

“So it’s okay for me to go down there all by myself? What if it’s a burglar? Or like, Ted Dahmer or something?”

“You mean Ted Bundy. You’re such a moron Poe.”

“Okay, first of all Rose - just because I’m not obsessed with serial killers like you are, does not mean I’m stupid. I watch the news, I’m worldly. Second -”

“Would you shut the hell up Poe? I can’t hear anything with you blabbing.”

“Geesh,  _ fine _ . No one ever listens to me anyway.”

“Yeah, I wonder why.”

“Oh whatever, Rose. Everyone knows you’re secretly in love with me.”

“Wha - are you - I can’t -  _ excuse me _ ? I am not - !”

“Oh my god you two.  _ Shut up _ . If the serial killer didn’t hear us before, they certainly know where we are now.”

“Guys… did you hear that? I think there’s someone coming up the stairs.”

“Yeah - because you won’t the hell up!”

“You said your dad is out of town this week, right Peanut?”

“He’s supposed to be in Wisconsin for a convention.”

“So… that’s definitely an axe murderer we’re hearing then? I swear to god, Poe, if you step on my foot  _ one more time  _ \- ”

“ _ Shhhhh _ !”

Four teenagers tense up at the same time, huddled next to her bedroom door with their ears pressed against the wood. Poe Dameron is trying to peer through the crack in the door, like he’ll be able to make out shit all in the dark hallway. Rose Tico is pressed against her side, her dark eyes wide with fear, and Finn Williams has a coat hanger in his hand, like that will offer them some sort of protection against a homicidal maniac.

All they need is a talking dog and they’ll really have the whole Scooby Doo vibe down pat.

A few minutes ago, right when they got to the part in  _ The Last House on the Left _ when the killers were skulking around the parents’ house, they had heard a loud bang from downstairs. Since then, the movie has been paused and all four of them are convinced there’s a crazy killer in the house. Poe brought beer – something she has discovered she finds unbearably disgusting – and Finn brought fruity coolers that have given her a mild buzz, which is not really helping their logical thought processes at all.

Suddenly, the house goes utterly silent and Rose blows out a hard breath at her side.

“Should we go downstairs?” Finn whispers.

“I don’t - ” 

But what, precisely, Poe is about to say is drowned out by a loud knock against her bedroom door.

Finn screams like a banshee, Rose skitters away from the door to try and hide under the bed, and Poe shoves her in front of him on his way to lock himself in the bathroom. The doorknob rattles, but luckily she already locked the door, back when they were in the stages of thinking there only  _ might _ be someone in the house. She has never been so terrified in her entire life; her bladder feels hot and the alcohol only makes her head fuzzier as she tries to think of what to do.

Not ten seconds go by before there is another knock on her door, louder than the first time, and making her and Finn jump. At least he stayed with her – unlike her other cowardly friends.

“Rey?” a deep, familiar voice says on the other side of the door. The doorknob rattles some more before a fist knocks against it. Hard. “What the hell is going on in there?”

It’s Ben and he sounds absolutely  _ furious _ . She groans with belated realization. When she invited her friends over, thinking it would be the perfect time with her father out of town, she completely forgot about Ben coming over.

“Oh shit.” Finn closes his eyes with panic and none too conspicuously situates himself behind her back. 

“Who’s in there with you?” Ben asks this a quiet, icy sort of way that somehow only makes her more apprehensive. She’s never heard him sound this angry in her entire life.

In what she hopes is a breezy tone, she squeaks, “Just a second!”

“Open the door,” Ben growls through the door. “ _ Right now _ , Rey.”

Rose groans and starts crawling back out from where she’s half shoved under the bed. Poe has still not emerged from the bathroom, so it’s just her and Finn visible when she finally unlocks the door and opens it.

Ben's eyes are dark when the door opens to reveal him, and she can see his hands opening and closing into fists. A vein has appeared on his forehead, like a bad omen. The only time she can recall seeing him this angry was when Leia accidentally broke his guitar when she was cleaning his room a few years ago. 

His eyes are not on her at all though; they’re fixed on Finn with such seething intensity, her friend takes an involuntary step back. Then, Ben’s gaze flickers over their shoulders and he sees Rose leaning against the bed. 

Rose throws him a weak smile, waving awkwardly. 

Ben pushes out a slow breath. His jaw shifts and he looks back at her, examining her clothes and then her face with his eyes narrowed. Some of the anger has left his expression though, and she sags with relief.

“Um, hey,” she tries, her voice coming out all high-pitched and wrong, “so, we were just having a sleepover and…”

She trails off when Ben pushes the door open the rest of the way. His gaze lands on the cooler sitting by her bed. It’s opened, revealing several bottles of beer and coolers. His gaze snaps back to her, his eyebrows rising towards his hairline, and his lips folding together. 

She gets distracted by this last observation, her gaze focusing on his mouth before he shakes his head at her.

“Let’s chat downstairs.” Ben pushes off the door frame and starts walking down the hall.

“But…” she says weakly.

“Now, kiddo. Chop, chop.” Ben turns back to her, snapping his fingers.

“Goodbye Rey. It was nice knowing you,” Rose calls from the bed.

She turns back to her on the way out the door, flipping her the middle finger. Dread is cold and heavy in her gut when she follows Ben downstairs. She knows she shouldn’t have invited her friends over and that they definitely should not be drinking, but it’s nothing he didn’t do himself when he was her age. She’s frankly surprised at how angry he got, over something so stupid.

They get to the kitchen and when Ben turns back to her, she’s already launching into a defence before he speaks over her, low and deep in a way that gives her goosebumps.

“I don’t understand what the big -”

“Who is that guy?”

She stares at Ben, blinking stupidly for about ten seconds before he raises his eyebrows again. His jaw is clenched, and she’s never seen him look so tense before.

“Do you mean Finn?” she says slowly, almost incredulously. “He’s my friend from school. I’m pretty sure you’ve met him before. Like, a dozen times.”

“I heard another guy up there. Is he your friend too?”

_ What in the world _ , she thinks, flabbergasted at the dark anger in Ben’s eyes.

“Uh, yes?” She is beyond confused now and as Ben studies her face as closely as he would pay attention to one of his pre-med textbooks, his expression also shifts to uncertainty.

“So, neither of them are…?” He trails off and looks away from her.

Then, it hits her and she can’t help laughing disbelievingly.

“Oh my god,” she splutters, “I would never – they’re my  _ friends _ . Finn doesn’t even like girls for one and Poe – well. They’re like brothers, to me.”

“Ah… okay.” Ben chews on the inside of his cheek and peers down at her with narrowed eyes before he straightens up to his full height and sighs. “Well, I wasn’t planning on babysitting tonight, but I don’t have any other plans. Guess I’ll be chaperoning.”

Her disbelieving smile drops faster than lead on pavement. “Wait, what?”

“And I am confiscating the booze, too.”

“ _ Ben _ !”

“Did you just  _ whine _ at me?” 

“Come on, you can’t tell me you didn’t do the same when you were my age.” She is pouting as he leads her back to the stairs, steering her by the elbow. He almost smiles at that and she’s inwardly relieved for it. That strange dark anger is gone now, though she has no idea why he would care so much even if she was dating someone.

“Yeah, well, I was much stealthier than you are. Can’t believe you forgot I was coming over.” 

They lope up the stairs together, but she pauses on the landing.

“You’re not going to tell my dad are you?”

Ben stops as well, staring down at her with an unreadable expression. He purses his lips, his gaze flickering towards the stairs before the world’s smallest smirk quirks his lips.

“You’re washing my car tomorrow. I was going to go to the carwash but that should be a suitable punishment.”

“So you’re not going to tell?” she says softly, almost smiling. She actually doesn’t mind washing Ben’s car and she’s pretty sure he knows it too.

“You better not leave any streaks this time, or I’ll make you redo it.”

Which, she knows, is as good an answer as any.

*

It is Friday when the doctor’s office calls Rey to tell her the doctor would like her to come in to review her test results. Perhaps she should be panicking a bit more that something bad might have come back on them. She should have definitely let Luke know, but he’s barely been home this week and she decides to wait until she has something to tell him.

For what feels like the dozenth time, she returns to the doctor’s office late that afternoon. She’s wearing jean shorts, sandals and a band t-shirt. It’s about a million degrees outside, but the doctor’s office is as cool as ever and she wishes she thought to bring a cardigan. It’s the end of the day, just like her first appointment, and the busy waiting room has already cleared out by the time she gets in. When a nurse walks Rey back to the examination room, leaving her there to wait, she is shivering a little by the time the door opens. She has her phone in one hand, her earbuds wrapped around it. She’s been listening to  _ The Shins _ a lot lately - one of Ben’s favorites.

Then, she looks up and it’s not Jessa, or another one of the doctors. It’s like deja-vu to her first appointment, but there is no tingle of excitement this time.

Ben blinks down at her, his eyes dark against the moss green of his sweater. Like the first time, he has a stethoscope over his neck. He closes the door and she knows the look on his face, even though she hates it. It’s that careful blankness only he seems capable of crafting. 

Rey looks away from him, to the plain baby blue of the walls and puts her phone on the chair next to her without looking at it.

“How are you today?” Ben walks over to the sink to wash his hands and he does not ask her if she is doing her breast exams. 

She does not tell him that she has. Every single night, despite how confused he has made her over the last few weeks.

“I’m fine.”

It’s a lie, but she thinks he might know the truth anyway. She wants to ask what he is doing here, in this room with her, but she’s afraid to be the first one to break from this strange farce they’re playing at. Like she is his patient, and this is just a normal appointment.

“How is the breast pain this week?”

There is only a faint jolt to her stomach at his words. Only a glimmer of what it was like to have him touching her, kissing her, rubbing against her all over…

“It came back. Not too bad, just annoying.” 

_ Very good _ , she thinks, tapping her fingernails against her chair.  _ Do not cry. Do not yell at him. Just act like he is, like this is nothing. That’s all it could ever be, right? _

Ben turns back to her, but he’s grabbing her chart and not really looking her way.

“In your nipples still?”

Rey shifts in her seat, her thighs rubbing together without her really noticing it. Just hearing him say that word summons to mind the memory of all the things he did to her in her pool. 

When she looks back up at her cousin, his eyes are glued to her thighs. 

A scarlet blush spreads across her face and she makes a startled sound, much like a rocket taking off. His gaze snaps to hers and there is a change to his forced placidness, but it’s gone before she can decipher what it means.

“Yes.” She clears her throat and looks away again, hating that she is already blushing and it has not even been a full minute yet. Can’t he hurry this up so they can get it over with? 

“Jessa had to leave early today and there wasn’t anyone else, so…” Ben takes a seat in the chair at the desk and Rey can only gulp, still blushing like a fool. His gaze softens as he takes in her nervous expression and he shifts in his seat, like he does not quite remember how to sit properly. “Your pap test came back completely fine.”

“Alright.” She nods for good measure, waiting for him to get to the point of this appointment. Because surely there’s a reason she’s here, right?

“I’m going to order an ultrasound for your breast pain,” Ben tells her, and she can tell he’s looking at her now. That he’s watching her, when before he could barely meet her gaze.

She almost feels like ditching her skin.

Ben begins explaining how the test will work and while she’s trying to pay attention to what he’s saying, she’s also trying really hard not to notice how his forearms are lined with faint veins and distinct muscle. His hair is longer than he usually wears it, dark waves brushing to his shoulders and feather-soft as always. She is tempted to brush her fingers through it - until she becomes horrified with herself and looks anywhere but at him.

She’s still mad at him. He told her he regretted what they did in the pool, then he kissed her and  _ then _ fled from her house like she had tried to convert him to Satanism. She should be furious with him, not pondering over the texture of his fucking hair.

“Are you on birth control?”

Ben is back to looking down at her medical chart, apparently done with explaining the ultrasound. Her friend Kaydel once told her that her cousin was weird-looking, with his full lips, rook’s nose and dark eyes, but she has never found him weird looking. He's tall and broad-shouldered, his thighs thick as tree trunks with muscle. His skin is dotted with moles and beauty marks, and she remembers with startling clarity the fine trail of hair leading down the ridged v of his pelvis to his…

“Yes, to help with my periods.” Rey blushes scarlet as she says this, and she forces herself to stare up at the nature painting on the wall. It’s ugly. She could have done much better, not that Ben would be able to hang it up here. It’s not his practice, after all.

“Are you sexually active?”

He’s just staring down at her chart and Rey can’t help but be a little annoyed. Is there something fascinating written on it? The mystery of Stonehenge or Da Vinci’s secret code?

“I lost my hymen when Aunt Leia paid for those horseback riding lessons, but technically I’m still a virgin.” 

That little tidbit is out of her mouth before she can control it, but when his gaze finally snaps to hers, she can’t say she regrets it.

“Right,” Ben clears his throat, averting his gaze to her chart once more, “well unless there is anything new you want to -”

“I didn’t thank you for the job.” Her tone sounds conversational. Almost polite. But there is a seething threat behind that tone and from the way Ben blinks back at her, his jaw shifting and his grip tightening on the chart, he can sense it just as well as she can. “That was really thoughtful of you. Mitaka is really nice, too, though I don’t know how in the world you’re friends with someone so friendly. I should have thanked you before -”

“You’re still mad.” 

His words ring in the air and Rey stares at him before looking at the floor and closing her mouth.

“Yes,” she says, her voice hard and her gaze fixed on the floor.

“Do you understand the position I am in right now?” 

There is something in his voice that makes her look back at him. Some subtle faultline in that carefully engineered veneer. His jaw is lined with faint stubble and there are dark circles around his eyes that she did not notice before.

But Rey doesn’t care how much sleep he’s lost. Suddenly, she’s furious.

“I understand that you keep giving me whiplash, Ben.”

She can’t believe she’s saying these things with any amount of coherency. That there are words for the things he has made her feel. She leans forward in her seat and he leans away, as though her proximity burns him. She hopes it does. She hopes it makes him feel an ounce of the pain she’s felt in the last few weeks – hell, the last few  _ years _ .

“I was never going to tell anyone, you know.” Rey tries to remember to keep quiet in case anyone can hear them out in the hall. She tries but some of that steel is coming out anyway. Not quite loud enough to be shouting, yet enough to make her tremble a little from it. “I understand what’s at stake here. Your job, our parents - I get all that. I am not a fucking idiot, Ben.”

Oh, but it feels too good to stop talking now. Even though he looks rather like she has slapped him upside the head, even though a small piece of her breaks inside at the way she is walking to him. But he needs to hear this almost as much as she needs to say it. 

“This thing between us – you can’t just keep pushing me away and then pulling me back in whenever it’s convenient for you. You’re  _ hurting _ me.”

Ben’s lips part, his eyes widening with surprise and something very much like guilt, when suddenly it’s just too much.

Rey gets up from her chair with enough force that the legs squeak loudly against the linoleum floor. She makes it perhaps three steps across the small office when she hears his chair roll into the wall and then a large hand is grabbing her arm. She’s pulled back to him with hardly any resistance because there is a gravity well between them and it’s as undeniable as the moon’s orbit to the earth. And Ben is right there when she is inevitably pulled back to him; his head is tilted down to hers and his body is warm, even through his clothes.

Her breath leaves her in a gasp as he uses his other hand to cup her cheek.

“Should I just take this then?” Ben murmurs. His lips are so close to hers that all she can see are the warm brown of his eyes. His stethoscope becomes unbalanced on his massive shoulders, and when it falls to the floor neither of them appears to notice. “Is that what I should do, Rey?”

Her heart flutters in her chest. “If you want to. Yes.”

Ben groans and pulls her to him, his lips crashing into hers for a bruising kiss. Her head is spinning, her hands fisting his sweater as he angles her head and his tongue pushes into her mouth. They’re both trembling against one another and after a breathless second in which she takes some time to convince herself that this is really happening, she begins responding to him. Groaning softly, Ben lets her follow him back into his mouth, her tongue tentative against his. His hand grips her hair right at the base of her skull, like he did in her bedroom, and the other fans across her lower back to bring her closer, their torsos flush together.

Abruptly, Ben breaks the kiss and for a second, Rey is convinced he’s going to tell her to get out. That he can’t do this and once he tells her that, she knows she will not put herself out there to him again. That this will be it.

But he does none of those things.

Ben turns for the door and locks it. Then his hand lowers, those brown eyes darkening the same way they had when they were in her pool together. His gaze flits all over her body; from her face, down to her chest, and then to the long expanse of her tanned legs. Those he lingers on the longest.

“Get on the table, Rey.”

She stares at him, completely stunned.

When Ben repeats the command in a strained whisper, Rey stumbles forward to obey him because suddenly that is  _ all  _ she wants to do. Obey him, be  _ good  _ for him. 

The stirrups are turned away, leaving her plenty of room, and she kicks off her sandals before lying flat on her back. Her heart is racing now, and she watches him like prey as he walks to the table and stares down at her. Ben grasps her legs, running his fingers over smooth skin. His breathing is more labored now like he just ran up a flight of stairs. 

Then, his hands slide on the outer sides of her thighs, up to her shorts until they rest against the skin of her hips.

“I want to take these off,” he murmurs to her, after tugging on the belt loops of her shorts. “May I?”

“Yes,” Rey whispers.

Her legs are quivering with need as he reaches up for the button to her shorts and tugs them open. Then, he grasps both her shorts and the hem of her panties, sliding them down her legs until they drop to the floor. There's a pause, when the silence seems tense and waiting, and she finally works up the nerve to look at him. He is positioned so he is in between her legs and his eyes seem a little darker now, a little more intense, as he stares. She wonders if he likes what he sees. If her vagina is pretty or attractive...

His fingertips ghost down the inside of her thigh until they suddenly grasp her thighs, spreading her to his ravenous gaze.

“You haven’t been with anyone?” Ben sounds like he regrets the question before it’s fully left his mouth and it hangs there in the air between them.

Rey shakes her head, not quite able to meet his eyes now. "No, Ben. Not anyone."

He stares at her for a moment, the weight of his gaze heavy and lingering. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Somehow, this is the last thing she expects him to say. He pulls his hand away and his arms are hanging loosely by his sides. From where she’s laying, she can see his right hand opening and clenching into a fist. Opening and clenching.

“What do you mean?” Rey murmurs, hushed and anxious.  _ Please don’t make me leave. Please just touch me, anything… _

“It wasn’t always like this. It’s important you know that Rey. When we were kids, I never had these thoughts. Never.” He meets her gaze again, so painfully earnest and… Lost. Utterly lost. She knows the feeling all too well. “But over time, things changed… I tried to stay away. I really did.”

“But you couldn’t.”

His dark eyes flicker to hers before his gaze fixes back on her bare pussy. His hand reaches up again and fingertips brush down the inside of her thigh. She holds her breath, her entire body quivering with eagerness.

“No, I couldn’t,” Ben softly agrees, fingers trailing down until they brush against her labia, feather-soft and barely there. They continue to trail around her pussy, tracing the supple lips of her cunt until his fingertip rests lightly against her clit. “I don’t want to stay away anymore. I should, but I don’t think I can now that… I -  _ fuck _ -”

He almost pulls away and Rey knows she can’t bear any more of this. The waiting, the unknown. Any of it.

_ Brave face _ , she thinks to herself and she takes the leap.

“I feel the same way.” She can’t help the needy whimper that follows these words.

His jaw clenches like he is physically in pain and he applies the slightest pressure to her clit, making her gasp and twitch.

“Should I just take this, then?” Ben repeats to her, looking her in the eyes.

His finger slides down, torturously slow until he circles the opening of her pussy. He pushes in, watching her arch her back, watching as her eyes flutter and she breathes on a gasp. Then, his finger is fully inside her, pumping slowly.

“ _ Oh _ ,” she says, in the smallest voice ever.

“Answer me, Rey. Should I take this, hm? Because I want to… I’ve never wanted anyone so badly in my fucking life.” His voice is unrecognizable. It’s husky, like he’s gargling gravel and she doesn’t know if it’s this or the way he suddenly adds another finger and  _ slams _ them inside her that makes her lose any shred of doubt or regret.

“Please,” she whispers, trembling and needy. “Please, Ben.”

He’s folding his lips together now, his jaw clicking with how hard he is clenching it. His face is rearranging into an expression she recognizes as resolve. She’s seen it on him before - when he had to rescue his mother a few years ago from an abusive ex-husband when he told Luke he had to lay off the drinking after her mother died because he still had a daughter to raise…

And now, she does not know what decision he has come to, only that he has.

Ben pulls his hand away and she sags with disappointment… Only then, he’s sucking her juices off his finger and he  _ growls _ . Before Rey can do so much as a whimper, he is undoing his belt and then his hands are hurriedly working through his zipper and button. He climbs onto the table with her, pushing her thighs open so he can settle between them. She only has time to see the head of his cock, all red and shiny, and then it’s his face taking up her vision.

“Say that again, baby,” Ben murmurs to her, gently cupping her face. His finger smooths over the bow of her lips and then traces down to her chin. His breath smells like apple juice, though she’s not really sure why that is.

“Please Ben,” Rey says, staring up at him like he’s the horizon above the clouds. “You can take whatever you want.”

She thought he might be gentle with her, that he might take his time. All of sudden, she doesn’t want that, and he seemingly doesn’t either because his mouth is claiming as he uses his tongue to part her lips, a deep growl ratcheting through his chest and into her mouth. She moans, a little too loudly for where they are, and he breaks away, breathing harshly and his eyes like wildfire.

“Shh, Rey. Someone might still be here. We have to be quiet.”

He kisses her shortly and then they’re just breathing against each other’s mouths as blunt pressure eases into her aching core. His breath catches, his entire body going taut with restraint as he pushes in one slow stretch. He’s big; she already knew this, but she cannot find it in her to really care. This is happening. This is real; here and now, him and her. She’s just light and sensation, biting her lips to keep from expelling the needy sounds lodged in her throat.

Ben whispers into her mouth, harsh and rough, “You have no idea the things I’ve thought about doing to you. How much I’ve wanted this...”

But she does know. All too well. 

Her thighs tremble around his hips and they both make a sharp sound at the feeling of their bodies slowly joining together. Although there’s vague discomfort, he feels so  _ right _ inside of her. She stares up at him, taking in every detail she can so she might bring them up later, to pick apart and relive again. 

Then, before either of them can say or do anything, her pussy _ contracts _ , becoming slicker with each passing second until, through no control of his own, Ben is abruptly sheathed to the hilt. 

He stifles a moan into her collarbone, trembling against her and clearly trying to hold back from for fear of hurting her. Another gush of wetness fills her cunt and he groans, his hips flexing weakly against hers.

“You feel so good, Rey. So  _ fucking _ good.” Ben huffs and then, his voice lowers, soft in her ear. “So fucking  _ tight _ , baby. So perfect.”

A warm feeling bursts inside her chest and all she can do is whimper, feeling like she’s lost under an undertow and the only thing keeping her from the abyss is the man above her.

“I know,” he whispers, kissing a path up her neck and to her cheek. There is a soft smile on his face and his honeyed eyes are warm and light. His hips flex, rolling through tight and resisting flesh, but the discomfort is a distant thing to the sudden ache in her heart. “I know, Rey.”

They’re kissing again, all wet lips and seeking tongues moving in tandem together. Soon, his tongue is mimicking his cock and then he’s fucking her mouth, softly coaxing her to respond.

“You c-can go faster,” she quietly whimpers against his mouth.

His breaths hitch and mingle with hers, and then he cups her cheek again, rougher this time when he shoves his tongue down her throat. She clenches on his thick length and he gives her a rough thrust in response, a deep groan tearing up from his stomach and vibrating sweetly against her clit. 

This feels so right when it absolutely shouldn’t. Here, with him inside her, their lips locked together… She moans as quietly as she can, her hands tentatively squeezing his biceps.

Soon, Ben does as she asks, tilting his hips into hers faster until all she can hear is the table rattling and creaking from his thrusts. His cock is almost unbearably thick, dragging against a spot she didn’t know existed, rhythmic and achingly hard inside her.

Rey moans. She’s so close and they’ve barely started.

“My good girl,” Ben murmurs nonsensically into her throat, his tongue flicking out to sample her sweat. Her pussy throbs at his husky praise and even though there’s some pain, she’s never felt so much pleasure in her life. He’s inside her, everywhere, all over. He’s everything she’s ever wanted. “Come all over my cock, sweetheart.”

A small, shattered sound leaves her lips as her climax overtakes her. Her whole body shakes with it, stars shooting behind her eyelids. Ben lifts up on his forearms to watch, panting and groaning. Her head tilts back, cords standing out in her neck as she bites back a loud moan, quivering all over his cock.

“ _ Fuck _ ,” he growls, in that deep rough way that makes her toes curl. “That’s so good, baby. So –  _ fucking _ \- good.” Each word is punctuated with a hard lunge of his pelvis into hers.

Then, she comes down, the world swimming back into focus and it’s his dark eyes sparkling down at her. Tendrils of pleasure shoot across her body, tightening her nipples and making her achy and sensitive. Her body seems to know what to do before she does because she begins eagerly rocking her hips into his, and though her rhythm is off, he waits patiently until they find something that is theirs, bodies moving in perfect, stuttering tandem.

And when Ben sucks on the tip of her tongue, circling his hips so his cock drags just the right way, Rey knows she’s going to come again. She moans into his mouth, all breathy and blissed out. His lips skip against hers, his teeth nipping her chin and jaw.

"Rey," he rasps, his hips circling against hers in a way that rubs her clit just the right way. "Do you like my cock, baby?"

Maybe that seems like the corny, chauvinistic dirty talk she would hear in some of the porn she watches, but with Ben, it really doesn’t feel that way. He sounds almost desperate, his lips parted and his eyes fixed on hers like he  _ needs  _ to know. 

And Rey is absolutely honest when she tells him, "I… I love it.”

“ _ Fuck baby _ ,” he snarls, fucking into her faster. She moans weakly, trembling all around him inside. She’s close again, and she does not know if she will survive another orgasm. “I'm going to have you again after this. Would you like that, my good girl? Take you in the pool, slide my cock into this cushtight pussy and take what’s mine."

Rey gasps at his rough, vulgar words. But… she loves them too. She loves that he’s talking to her like this, that they’re both dangling so close to the edge, making their movements desperate and messy.

“In my room, too,” Rey whimpers, shyly looking at him as he thrusts into her. His face is red, his eyes glassy, his tangled waves hanging into his eyes, and his pupils blown wide. He’s never looked more beautiful to her.

“Anywhere, baby. I’ll have you anywhere you ask me to,” Ben rasps, leaning down to brush his lips against hers. His fingers rub little circles against her jaw, his nose rubbing against her in a gesture that’s achingly tender despite the frantic pace at which he pounds into her.

His lips part, his eyelashes fluttering, and she leans in to whisper three words in his ear – three words that she decided on saying several minutes ago. She blushes wildly with her daring, her lips catching on his ear lobe when she says, “ _ Make me yours _ .”

The sound he makes isn’t even human.

It’s a rasping growl, a sound of such haunted need, her hips snap against his of their own volition, burying his cock even deeper inside her. Without warning, he grasps her thighs, folding them up until her knees touch her chest and then he is thrusting into her so hard she has to bite her lips so she doesn't cry out. Her cunt flutters and she arches her back, silently begging for more.

Suddenly, there’s a tearing sound and when she looks down, she sees Ben ripping the collar of her t-shirt and then he shoves her bra up, his plush lips wrapping around the small bud of her left nipple. Her fingernails scratch gently across his scalp and he moans against her, making her hips buck as she squirms and fights to keep silent. He releases the nipple with a pop and moves on to her other breast, keeping her pinned down beneath him.

“I-I feel…”

“Tell me, Rey,” he rumbles against her, dragging his tongue across her tits like he can’t get enough.

“I’m… I’m gonna…”

“Are you going to come again?”

Rey nods, allowing him to kiss her deeply once more, making her needy and wanton. Not once does he let up his punishing pace. He angles his hips, so his cock is striking a new place inside her, stretching her out and getting her ready for his cum.

“Good,” Ben says, leaning up to watch her slowly fall apart for him again. “Come for me, sweetheart. This tight little pussy is  _ mine _ . Isn’t that right, my good girl?”

“Y-yes…”

“Yes what?” he murmurs into her skin, fisting her hair.

“Yes, Ben.”

He growls like an animal at that and then he thrusts hard, so his cum can go as deep inside her as possible. Her fingernails dig into his shoulders at the thought.

“Rey, you’re so perfect. I -”

She mewls when she comes and Ben cuts himself off from speech, taking pained breaths through his teeth and groaning at the sharp squeeze of her pussy. He grasps her tit in one large hand, his teeth nipping her jaw and then his rhythm catches, his hips flexing and stuttering through his release.

And they stay that way for several seconds, lost to the tidal wave of their shared euphoria. Lost to each other. 

Before her legs can sag out of his death grip, they’re kissing again, even more passionate than before. She can feel his cum leaking out of her and yes, she’s a little sore now, but it doesn’t matter. His tongue sweeps into her mouth and she moans at the rough tenderness of his embrace. 

When he pulls away, he rubs his nose against hers in that same tender gesture from before and for the first time in a long while, Rey feels that part of her that has been missing for so long is finally complete.


	7. I Wanna Hurry Home to You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “When’s Luke going to be home?” He’s pulling her close again, his lips brushing against her cheek and jaw.
> 
> “He’s working through to the day after tomorrow,” Rey replies shakily.
> 
> Ben’s hand reaches up, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I have the rest of the day off...”
> 
> Then he waits, letting it be her decision.
> 
> Rey and Ben talk through some of their issues, only to realize that they might not be so different after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some heavy angst in the memories this chapter. Luke and Rey have ISSUES. 
> 
> On the flip side, we also have soooooo much smut coming our way. Like gratuitous heapings of smut. This a trash-fic and we know what we're here for :D
> 
> Warnings: Those dom/sub tones really start to come into play this chapter and things really just keep heating up from here on out. Some butt stuff this chapter, but no penetration. 
> 
> Starting next chapter, the memories are going to center around what happened between Rey and Ben to catalyst the whole plot - so be prepared for some Underage in those sections. They do not have intercourse when she is seventeen, but other things happen of a sexual nature, just a forewarning there. 
> 
> Also - for anyone who read this story when it was originally posted, I changed a major plot development near the end. I'll explain more when we get closer to that part, but it just didn't feel right within the scope of the story and I decided to go in a different direction. I think all will make sense once we get to the end ;)
> 
> Anyway - enjoy your porn lovelies! <3

She is seventeen in this memory. Late August.

It’s what her father calls a lazy day Sunday. Rain pounds on the roof, a thundering chorus against the eavesdrop and windows. Days like today are special to her. There is no yard work to be done, no housework to worry about, no school assignments to drudge through because it’s late summer and she does not have school for another few weeks. The house can just be quiet and theirs; they can watch  _ Star Trek _ together, they can snooze in front of the television (her dad in his armchair and her on the couch), and they are beholden to nothing and no one.

They had been having a great day. For them, anyway. No arguments and just… being together, for a rare day when it is just the two of them and they can agree on something to watch.  _ Star Trek  _ is always a safe choice and she is happy to watch Picard attempt to find a diplomatic solution to yet another interstellar mishap he and his crew find themselves in this week. 

She had to ruin it, of course.

She is still crying, even though she heard Luke’s car peel out of the driveway almost an hour ago. The sound of their screaming match can probably still be heard in the dining room if she were to dare venture downstairs. That and that third, unnamed presence that always lingers whenever they are at their worst. He’s not even home now, but that presence remains. It’s always there, an unseen force that presses like cold knives.

Her mother has been dead for eight years, but that doesn’t stop the memories. They’re always there, the overseer and cosmic demise to homey comforts and quiet, companionable Sundays.

She had not meant to spill her juice on the carpet in the sitting room. There had been a commercial break and she was thirsty and she had just wanted…

Fuck it all, she just wanted to  _ look _ at the pictures. To look at her mother’s face and trace the places where they were similar. They never use that room because it had been her mother’s favourite place apparently, and she knows it’s something that should not be disturbed, much like when Ben is practising with his guitar and has his bedroom door closed tight. But then, one thing had led to another and she had not even noticed that her elbow had knocked her glass off the hutch and onto the carpet. 

Luke would never have known she was in there had it not been for her rifling through the junk cupboard to find the carpet cleaner, but by then it had been too late. 

“You just can’t well enough alone, can you?” he had yelled at her, angrily taking the rag and cleaner from her hands to mop up her juice himself. 

And when she burst into tears she had seen the guilt in her father’s eyes. She had seen the way he had swayed towards her like he wanted to take her in his arms and take all those angry words back. 

But he hadn’t. 

So she had gone upstairs, listening to the angry sounds her father made downstairs as he finished wiping up her spill and then the slam of the door when he inevitably went out to get drunk at some bar downtown. He won’t be home again tonight.

She’s secretly glad and she hates herself for it.

After her father leaves, she gets out of her bed and does the only thing that might make her feel better. Or at least distract herself from the sorrow closing in around her. Above her head, there is a fitted sheet stretched taut, tucked behind the corner of her dresser and pulled overhead, to the far bedpost of her bed. More sheets are intricately constructed, leaving her a four-foot clearance overhead. Sheets have been pilfered from the linen closet down the hall, pillows arranged so that she can lounge comfortably against her nightstand. She has her iPod docked to a speaker on the floor next to her, where Matt Berninger lowly, and almost conversationally, sings one of her favourite songs. Twinkling prettily along the edge of her bed and illuminating her little fortress is a strand of white Christmas lights.

It's one of her better blanket forts.

Downstairs, she hears the front door open and a part of her wants to burrow deeper into the blankets until she disappears entirely. Until she ends up in some other land, somewhere like  _ Narnia _ , but preferably hotter. Like a desert, where she does not have to worry about dead mothers or disappointed fathers, where she can hunker beneath the awning of a derelict spaceship, sticking out of the dunes like a rogue fossil. Where she can sit in her own little hole in the ground, a helmet on her head and her feet in the sand, free to do as she pleases. Free to spill however much juice she wants, wherever she wants. Free to howl at the moon.

Footsteps pad across the carpet in the hallway and she is quick to lean forward, pulling part of the sheet over so the fort is closed. Hopefully, her father gets the memo –  _ fuck off _ .

“Rey?”

Her lips part and then she scrambles forward to open the fort again, absently using her arm to wipe the tears from her face. She makes it just in time to see a pair of legs that are not her father’s, about five feet away. She cannot see above the thighs, but even without looking, she knows who it is. She hovers near the entrance to her fort, waiting patiently. She’s still sniffling a little, but she can pretend it’s allergies. No one needs to know.

When she looks up, she just can make out the outline of his face through the sheets.

“May I enter?” 

Ben sounds like he always does – as serious as cancer. He must know why the fort is here, but she can pretend he doesn’t. She pretends a lot in this house.

“Not without the password.” 

And if she sounds like she has a bad head cold, Ben does not comment on it.

He’s quiet for a moment. Thinking – he’s always thinking, this thoughtful and morose man. Always turning over the next course of action before committing to it wholeheartedly.

“How silly of me,” he says finally, and she breathes a laugh, the corners of her eyes stiff from crying. But she’s smiling, if only a little, and from the sounds of his voice, so is he when he says, “ _ Crookshanks _ .”

“Correct,” she replies and then he’s stooping down, taking care to bend his head so he clears the fort’s entrance. He’s got a  _ Ramones _ t-shirt on and his typical ripped jeans. He smells like the rain outside, his hair damp and sticking to his forehead in wayward waves. 

He spots the lights first and pauses to smile crookedly.

“Ornate,” he offers and then his gaze skids across her face, his smile fading away.

She knows what she looks like. She’s wearing shorts and one of Ben’s old hoodies, the hood pulled up over her head. Her eyes are red and swollen and she’s as pale as spilt milk. 

Backing up so he can get in, she settles into her pillows, sighing as the song changes to something quieter. She can feel him watching her, analyzing the redness around her eyes. Like every other time he has found her this way, she does not offer an explanation. He’s been around the house enough to know what probably happened.

“You know this band has new stuff?” Ben crawls inside, his t-shirt rucked up his hips so she can see the creamy skin of his back.

She sniffs and looks away before he can catch her peeking. 

Then, he sits across from her, stretching out his legs as he leans back on his hands. He reaches over and silently pulls her hood down, her hair spilling around her shoulders. She needs to get it trimmed soon. It’s getting too long.

“I felt like listening to  _ Boxer _ .” 

She can tell that static is making her hair stick up on end from the way Ben looks up at her head, a soft smile playing on his lips.

“I was going to see if you wanted to go to the movies. They’re doing an oldies night.  _ Donnie Darko _ is playing.” It’s her favourite movie and although Ben is too hipster to ever admit to it (which in and of itself is ironic) she knows it’s his favourite too.

But she doesn’t really feel like leaving the house. Or her fortress, more accurately.

“I’m not feeling well.” It’s an easy excuse and not entirely a lie.

“No?” He knows anyway. He always does.

It’s a silent invitation; she can tell him about the fight, about the juice on the carpet and her father’s never-ending grief, but she doesn’t really want to do that either. Her head hurts from crying and suddenly all she wants is for the two of them to stay right here.

“Can you rub my back?” 

It’s been a long time since he’s done that for her. Whenever she wasn’t feeling well, he would always rub her back for her. Sometimes even to help her fall asleep. She isn’t feeling sleepy now, but maybe it will make her feel better. 

Ben’s jaw shifts and then he nods his head, gesturing for her to lie down. He slides over to her and pulls her head on his chest, tucking it under his chin. He’s warm, but then again, he always is, running like a furnace all year round. His arms wrap around her and then his hand is on her back, running in soothing circles. She feels his fingers in her hair and then he cups her to him with his other hand, cradling her against him.

She closes her eyes and when she breathes in, it’s rain, cigarettes, and mint, it’s lazy day Sundays and the two of them, and she thinks this can be it. Here, under the twinkling lights and in the warmth of his arms, this can be her  _ Narnia _ , even if only for a little while.

His voice is soft when he starts singing along to her song and she burrows closer on instinct.

“… _ standing at the punch table, swallowing punch… can’t pay attention to the sound of anyone _ …”

*

Rey has cleaned the entire house, had a bath to help her achy muscles (mostly in her thighs and vagina), and she’s watched two seasons of  _ The Next Generation _ even though she’s seen them all a thousand times. 

She is still a little sore from yesterday, but she feels better. Reassured. And…

She blushes when she thinks about the things they did in Ben’s office. The things he  _ said _ . Rey wonders how long he’s wanted her the way she wants him and then, in the scared part of her brain, she wonders if now that he got what he wanted, he will ignore her again.

She’s laying on the couch, glumly reflecting over her impulsive decisions, when the lock clicks on the front door. She frowns, sitting up a little. Her father is working a double shift for the next few days, so he shouldn’t be home. Unless it really is Ben and he’s keeping his word…

The door clicks shut and then it is Ben rounding the corner into the living room, not her father. Her stomach clenches, her lips part and she can only stare in surprise at her cousin. He stares back at her, seemingly just as surprised to find her in her own living room. She belatedly realizes she did not bother changing into regular clothes today since she spent most of it cleaning. She’s wearing her tiny sleep shorts and an old tank top. 

Then, Ben smiles at her, his eyes just as warm as ever and she’s… relieved. Utterly relieved.

“Hey,” he says, grinning at her in that crooked way of his.

“Hi.” She smiles shyly and grabs a blanket off the couch to cover up her embarrassing pyjamas.

Ben swings his keys in his hand. He looks nice, as usual, wearing a dark blue dress shirt that looks like it was tailored to perfectly fit his muscular torso and black dress pants.

“How are you feeling today?” He lopes in the room and kicks his shoes off like he always does. He comes to sit beside her on the couch, his gaze flitting all over her face.

“I’m okay.” Rey wishes she had something more articulate to say but lately he’s always reducing her to two-word sentences.

“You can tell me if you’re not feeling right. That was… a lot yesterday.” He’s not smiling anymore, but that warmth is in his eyes still. Somber regret and guilt, shining back at her. “I should have been much gentler with you - hell, I shouldn’t have done any of it at all but… Listen, Rey, if you regret it, or feel like I hurt you in any way -”

She cuts him off, pushing the blanket off her arms and leaving it to droop around her waist when she shakes her head adamantly. “No, no. It was …good. Like  _ really _ good.”

Ben pauses, his lips parting in surprise.

She blushes scarlet and looks away. “I mean, I’ve never done  _ that _ before. I’m a bit sore today, but it’s nothing major. And it wasn’t…”

Fingers reach under her chin and then he’s turning her head so she’s facing him again.

“It wasn’t what?” Ben says in a soft, rasping voice that despite the faint ache there, makes her wet instantly.

“It wasn’t unwanted,” Rey rushes out, feeling foolish and a little crazy. But she’s also relieved to say it out loud without the risk of him fleeing from the room.“I think about it… about  _ you _ . A lot. All the time really.”

Then, he’s smiling again, endearingly crooked and boyish. Her chest glows with a strange, foreign feeling that rushes through her at the sight of that smile and she looks away again before she can betray herself any further.

“Sweetheart, you have no idea how happy that makes me.” He brings her face back to his again, his lips sweeping across hers in a feather-soft kiss. “I think about you too.” Another kiss, brushing across her lips. Stealing all the air in the room. “All the fucking time, actually.”

“But Ben…” Rey trails off, her stomach filled with dread again. He pauses, nodding at her to continue. “Why did you ignore me for so long? If you felt the same way...”

He pulls away and at first, she fears that she’s done it. She’s pushed him away. But then he takes her hand and kisses the back of it.

“For a lot of reasons. Some of them were stupid and some were legitimate.” He pulls in a deep breath and shakes his head. “Mostly, though, I was trying to protect you. I knew the way I felt, the things I wanted to do - to my fucking  _ cousin  _ no less - were not right.”

Rey shows all signs of interrupting but he raises a hand to silence her and she subsides. 

“Just, let me get this out. It’s important.”

“Okay,” she murmurs quietly. 

“I don’t know when it happened,” he tells her in a shaken tone. “Maybe when you were sixteen. Maybe when you were a bit older… or maybe there was this feeling there all along and I didn’t realize it. But I  _ always _ wanted to protect you. To do right by you because I saw how it was with Uncle Luke and I knew you needed someone to look out for you. It became this twisted, horrible thing for me for a long time. And then, when I figured out that you felt the same way I did, I just panicked.”

Rey tries very hard to remember how to breathe and latches on to his every word like it's a map to the Holy Grail. 

“Things got fucked up and it was all my fault. After the cabin, I just stayed away because I thought that was the best thing I could do for you.” He looks quite ashamed of himself now and if it weren’t for the gravity of what he was telling her, she would throw her arms around him and hug him. “Then, I bounced from girlfriend to girlfriend. Nothing ever felt right with those girls though. I broke a few hearts, which wasn’t right, but I couldn’t afford to care. Every night when I went to sleep, I saw your face. That feeling never went away, no matter what I did.”

Scratch that, she would be kissing the hell out of him right now, but something stills her. She is going to let him have his say because she needs to hear this almost as badly as he needs to say it. 

“And then?” She encourages softly. 

“Then,” Ben says with a heaviness she feels down to her toes, “I came over that day, a few weeks ago. To use your pool - remember? When I saw you - when I saw the way you still looked at me - I knew it was over for me. You’re all grown up now, not that plucky little kid my uncle always got me to watch over, and I… I fucking missed you. So much, Rey.”

She holds on fast to his hand and he squeezes it gratefully. Ben purses his lips, looking shamefaced and at the same time a little mischievous as well.

“But… I know how I am with sex. I like things rougher and you… You don’t deserve that. I should have… I mean, we can go as slow as you want now. Or we can never do it again if you want.” Watching Ben babble -  _ Ben  _ for god’s sake - is utterly surreal for Rey. And he just keeps going. “Or, if you feel like I forced you into any of this, please tell me because I never wanted that…”

But no. No, no, no. He’s not going to do that. He’s not going to treat her like she’s made of glass or some pretty flower that he has to handle with white gloves. She’s always been his sturdy little Rey and she’s certainly not going to stop being that person now. She’s not fragile. A long time ago, she told him this and he was willing enough to believe it then. That’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it’s going to go now. 

So yes, she might be shy. She might not have any fucking idea what she’s doing and what this is yet, but she most certainly won’t let him reduce her to a victim. To some unwilling participant.

She can do this instead.

It takes a second and then her lips are on his. She makes herself press against him until she’s halfway across his lap. She makes herself take control of this, for just this second, because she knows what Ben wants if only a little. He does not like to give up control. He never has, but in this moment, he has to understand, or this will never work.

The sound he makes is faint. The beginning of a groan that turns into something light. Something sweeter. Then, she pulls away, moving back to her spot with as much dignity as she can in a pair of tiny sleep shorts, with her nipples poking through her tank top and her cheeks blush-stained.

“I know what I want,” Rey says quietly, with a steely breed of resolve she did not think herself capable of. Ben is staring back at her like he silently agrees with that assessment. Like he has no idea who this creature is, sitting before him. Like he is struck  _ dumb _ . “Don’t take that from me, Benjamin Organa. I’ve known what I want for years now. It’s always been you. I know that you like things a certain way. I happen to like them that way too.”

Because he is going to have to learn that about her, too. That she is not some innocent little child. That she wants a  _ lot  _ of things when it comes to sex, even if she has not done most of them yet. 

Ben nods slowly, as though he’s in a dream.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” he repeats and there’s a shift in his expression. A sharper awareness of her that had not been there before, like he might see the true vision of her. That she has teeth too, just like he does. That they might be the same kind of creature, a hunter and huntress, and that he might like to see how far he can push her before she bites. That he might like it very much, when she claims him in all the ways he likes to claim her.

“Because I don’t want to go back to the way things were before.” That much she knows down to the marrow in her bones.

His expression clears, becoming repentant and melancholy, the way he was when he was younger. Years ago, they had gone to a local fair. She won a goldfish at one of the booths, though she doesn’t recall what game they had been playing. She had dubbed the goldfish Mr. Spectacles, because he had white rings around his eyes. Ben offered to carry Mr. Spectacles for her and neither had noticed the rather precarious – and utterly careless – way he had been swinging the bag around, with the poor Mr. Spectacles swishing around inside. 

By the time they got home, Mr. Spectacles was floating at the top of the bag.

Afterwards, Rey had not spoken to Ben for over a week. It had taken another goldfish, some poorly baked blueberry muffins (her favourite) and, finally, a long-winded apology letter before she forgave him. The look he’s wearing now is very similar to that day and she breathes a little easier at the sight of it. 

Finally, he’s listening to her.

“It won’t go back to that. I should have never done that in the first place.” He leans towards her to capture both her hands in his. “This might be fucking insane, but I can’t pretend this away anymore. Now that I know you feel the same… I don’t want to stay away from you. I can’t.”

“I don’t want you to either,” she says quickly.

Ben smiles, rubbing a finger over her chin and up over her lips. “Okay. Okay good.”

Then, he looks serious again for a moment, his lips folding together in that way of his.

“I want this. You have no fucking idea how badly, Rey. But we have to be careful how we go about it. We’re not blood related, but we’re still family and… No one would understand. We could get into trouble and neither of us wants that.”

“So, you don’t want to stop?” Rey says, hanging on to just this part for now.

His eyes darken and his hand squeezes her knee, running up the meat of her thigh to grip the flesh there tightly.

“No fucking way do I want to stop,” he says and  _ god _ , his voice goes right to her core. “But I will if you do. At any point Rey, you say the word and we stop...  _ But, _ if you really want to explore this together, it has to stay a secret. You can’t tell your friends, or anyone else. I just want to make sure you understand what this means.”

Rey stares back at him and nods. This concession is the easiest thing in the world - at least, for now. “Okay, we don’t tell anyone.”

His lips part and when he smiles again, it’s slow and pleased, like something she would want to curl around and cuddle all day long.

“When’s Luke going to be home?” He’s pulling her close again, his lips brushing against her cheek and jaw.

“He’s working through to the day after tomorrow,” Rey replies shakily.

Ben’s hand reaches up, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I have the rest of the day off...”

Then he waits, letting it be her decision.

“Want to watch tv with me?” Because she’s not nearly brave enough to ask for what she really wants.

He smirks at her knowingly. “Lie on your side, baby. I’ll lay behind you.”

Rey eagerly does as he asks, lying on her side and snuggling up to Ben when the warmth of his body curls around hers from behind. The blanket is still on her legs and waist and when his big hand settles on her hip, he slowly pushes it away.

“You aren’t cold, are you?” he asks, his deep voice reverberating off her back.

She shivers a little, but it’s not because she’s cold. “No.”

Ben gets the blanket off of her and then he seems to notice her shorts. They’re old and about two sizes too small, so her the curve of her bum is poking out the ends. His fingertips run up the back of one of her long, smooth thighs until he reaches the hem of her shorts. His fingernails drag across her skin at the crease between her bum and thigh, eliciting goosebumps all over her body.

“Is this okay?” Ben asks lowly.

“Mhm. Yes,” Rey says on a gulp.  _ Fuck yes, it’s okay _ , she thinks but does not say.

“Good.” He brushes a kiss against her shoulder blade.

Rey squirms, rubbing herself against something hard and unyielding. Ben makes a delicious little sound when she does, his fingertips busy tracing the curve of her ass. It’s his cock she is feeling against her backside, she realizes. It’s large and impossibly hard already. 

She rubs against it again, experimentally, and he hisses out a sharp breath.

“Are you teasing me?” Ben rasps into her hair.

“N-no.” She’s staring at the tv without really seeing it. It’s starting to rain outside but all she can really focus on is the sound of Ben’s dragging breaths behind her.

“No?”

Then his hand grips her entire thigh and pushes it forward so that her legs are spread. She’s lying mostly on her stomach now and he looms over her, his cologne smelling like rain and mint. His fingers brush over her pussy, feather light against the material of her shorts.

She whimpers.

“I think you’re lying, Rey.” His fingers trace a path over her ass and up the hem of her shorts. Then, he leans over her and whispers in her ear, “Are you wearing anything under these?”

“Why don’t you look and see?” she whispers, half mortified with herself but mostly just incredibly turned on.

Ben growls at her, the sound reverberating against her skin, and in one quick motion, he grabs the hem of her shorts and tears them down her legs. She gasps at his roughness, her heated core drenched already. Her shorts end up on her ankles, but then Ben’s tracing the slit of her pussy and she whimpers, pushing her ass against him for more.

“Fucking  _ soaked _ ,” he says on a groan, with his finger squelching through her juices.

“ _ Ben _ .”

He gathers the sticky mess at her core and brings it up to her clit. Rey writhes under his relentless touch. He rubs in tight circles, until he applies hard pressure to her clit, making her buck and moan against him. His finger circles back to her opening and then he’s pushing in, the sound embarrassingly wet, even to her own ears. His breathing has grown ragged as she moans to the pumping of his finger. Pressing hectic kisses along her shoulder blade, he sucks her skin into his mouth at the same time he curves his finger, making her keen and arch against him.

“Get on your hands and knees,” Ben growls in her ear and then he’s gone from behind her.

Rey hears him taking clothing off but she’s too shy to look at him. She does as he commands, kicking off her shorts and leaving her ass and pussy exposed in the chilly air. She shifts on the couch when he crouches behind her, his large hands gripping each of her ass cheeks and prying them open.

“ _ Fuck _ .” Rey feels warm breath against her thighs and then his tongue is swiping where his fingers just were. “Mmmmm, baby. You taste so sweet.”

She moans uncontrollably, her knees threatening to buckle as Ben leans into to stroke his tongue from her clit all the way up to her soaking core. His tongue pushes in, fucking her in a way that will embarrass her later, the sounds wet and filthy. She bucks back into him until his hands clamp around her thighs and still her movements.

"All mine," Ben growls savagely, swiping her clit with his tongue and then sucking it in a way that makes her sob brokenly for more. "Tell me this is for me, baby."

"It's -  _ mmmf _ \- a-all for you," Rey moans out, bucking her hips in time with his tongue.

"Good girl." Her cunt clenches at his words. That’s all she wants – to be his good girl.

Ben licks her broadly once more, groaning with pleasure at the taste. His fingers spread her even more and then his lips wrap around her clit, sucking and tugging and grazing with his teeth. She’s nearly sobbing, her cunt spasming with the threat of her release. 

Then, he’s lapping at her in smaller strokes, giving her a second to catch her breath before moving back to her opening. 

But he doesn’t stop there.

Rey’s breath stills as his tongue travels up and up until he goes…  _ there _ . He’s gentle when he circles her other hole, his licks light and flicking against sensitive flesh. Her back arches, much to Ben's cooing approval, presenting her ass perfectly to his seeking tongue. He flicks, circles and strokes, dipping down every other lick to sample her dripping wet pussy. He pushes two fingers into her cunt without warning, growling at how hard she clenches his digits, before he resumes flicking his tongue against her other hole. Ben doesn't give her time to feel self-conscious, his fingers pumping and curling inside her pussy, while he rims her tight hole with his wicked tongue.

“One day,” Ben rasps, in between lingering strokes that make her whine and moan and do all sorts of embarrassing things, “If you’ll let me, I’m going to fuck you here too. But we have all the time in the world before we get to that.”

His fingers squeezing indents in her ass as she moans, babbling his name in a broken stream of moaning and whining.

Then he withdraws again.

"Nuh uh," Ben says when she complains, slapping her ass for good measure. "Roll over for me. Take off your shirt too."

She rolls over but feels rash enough not to remove her shirt. Her plan gets halted however, when she turns over to see Ben naked. He's kneeling on the couch and smirks at her as she stares at him. His pecs and abs are defined as ever, his hips are trim without an ounce of fat on them, his biceps muscular and his thighs rippled with defined edges.

But it’s his cock that draws all her attention.

It’s thick and throbbing. The length and girth are proportionate to his size, the head red and angry looking, and she wonders how he fit his cock inside of her in the first place. It’s so much bigger than the man’s in the video on her computer.

Ben grips his length and gives it a rough squeeze.

"Take off your shirt," he repeats in a way that makes her shiver.

"But I want…" Rey trails off, too shy to say it out loud.

His hand goes to her knees and he roughly parts her legs, a sharp hiss escaping his lips as he stares down at her shaved, glistening pussy. "Tell me, baby. Tell me what you want."

"Can you show me how to check them again?"

His eyes flicker to hers, his smirk returning as she suspected it would. She feels very much like a feast being served up for him to gorge on. She’s beginning to understand her Ben. He likes to play. He likes to be in control. 

And he loves to hear her beg.

"Oh baby,” he whispers to her, “I can do whatever you want me to."

Ben situates himself between her thighs, her legs spreading further to accommodate him. His thick length rests right over her clit as leans over on one arm to trace her breasts through her thin tank top.

"Have you been doing your breast exams, Rey?" He whispers into her ear before pressing light, fluttering kisses on her neck and jaw. He smells like her now, musky and sweet.

"Yes. Yes Ben."

"Every night, like I told you?" He slowly closes a hand over her tit and begins massaging. 

She squirms underneath him.

"Yes. Every night."

"Mmm… good girl." He pulls up her tank top and gently guides it over her head, leaving her flushed and naked underneath him. His hips move and his cock rubs right on her clit making her moan and buck against him.

"Can you check my nipples again?" Rey asks, moaning when he glides his cock against her cunt, the head catching at her clit.

"What should I use to check them?" He leans his weight on her more fully, the couch creaking from his gentle thrusts. He presses his forehead to hers and they share a breath together, bodies moving in a desperate tandem. 

"Your tongue… please Ben?" She doesn't recognize herself at this moment, this wanton creature canting her hips in time with her cousin's thrusts. But she knows what he wants – what he  _ needs _ – and she’s quickly discovering that she needs it too. 

He groans into her neck, licking up her pulse.

"Fuck you beg so sweetly," he chuffs into her skin. "Beg me some more, baby girl."

"Please check my nipples," Rey pleads in her best warbling whine. She blushes hotly but decides to go for it, saying the filthy words that she knows he wants to hear. That she needs to  _ say _ . "Please Ben, I n-need you to make sure they're healthy."

Ben releases a pained chuckle, his breathing ragged in her skin before he scoots down a little, nosing across her breasts and bumping her nipple with his chin. She arches her back, presenting her aching tits to his awaiting mouth. Then, he lunges at her breast like he's starved for it, his lips pulling and suckling. She stifles a drawn-out moan into her arm, and he looks up at her then, his pretty plush lips wrapped around her pink nipple. He releases it with a pop, tutting at her.

"No, none of this. I want to hear you." He moves her hand away just as he attacks her other breast, suckling and tugging her nipples between his teeth.

" _Mmmmf_ , oh… Oh  _ Ben _ … Please don't stop."

He groans into her skin, his tongue moving urgently. Her fingers card in his soft raven locks and pull, earning her a gravelly groan against her sensitized nipple. He flicks the tip of his tongue and sucks, making wet noises that echo across the quiet living room. His cock catches at her entrance but he won't let her impale herself on it as she so desperately needs to. He circles his hips teasingly, rubbing his hot thick length in tortuous circles against her opening and only dipping in half an inch to pull away again.

Rey carries on begging him, only now she’s not playing anymore. She means it, growing more desperate by the moment. "Please Ben.  _ Please _ ."

His cock inches in at her words, only to pull out once more, those dark eyes capturing hers while he suckles at her tits. He licks her broadly, flicking her nipple with his wicked tongue.

"Beg me, Rey. I want you to fucking  _ beg _ ," he rasps against her breast, his dark hair falling into his eyes and his eyes half-lidded with drunken pleasure. He pulls on her breast again, squeezing her other tit so hard she knows it will bruise.

"Please," she whines, bucking her hips against the cock teasing her entrance. But he just moves with her, his cock nestling just outside her entrance, teasing her.

"I said beg me, Rey. Beg me to slide my thick cock inside you and give you what you need."

" _ Please _ ," she cries, delirious with need. "I want you inside me!"

His cock dips in and she can feel him trembling above her, his restraint slipping… but then he withdraws. Tears fall down her face, her pussy aching and empty, clenching around nothing.

"You do?" He coos, disingenuous. "I don't know if I believe you, Rey."

Ben resumes sucking her nipples until they're almost too sensitive but she can't bear for him to stop. His cock is right there, dripping precum into her soaking pussy. She's wild with need, her hips arching and bucking.

"Please Ben," Rey rasps, her voice raw and anguished. She's not even aware of what she's saying. Everything is fiddled down to the aching need only he can fill. "Please, Ben, I  _ need _ you -  _ oh _ !"

And that's when he loses it.

Ben slams his cock into the hilt. He rips his mouth off her tit, his face twisting into a fierce snarl of pleasure.

" _ Fuck _ ," he groans, pounding his cock into her again.

Rey moans loudly, her pussy contracting as he finally sets to fucking her. Her tits bounce, glistening with his saliva as she arches into his thrusts. His pace is rough and frantic, skin slapping skin in the quiet living room. 

And less than five punishing thrusts in, she's coming.

Rey releases a long, shrieking cry of ecstasy. She nicks his collarbone with her teeth, her fingernails scratching across his back and there's a wet gush as her pussy gives sharp contractions around the cock inside her. Ben groans helplessly, panting above her as his hips flex and grind through her squeezing aftershocks.

When she's done, she's suddenly empty before she realizes he's picked her up and dropped her on her hands and knees. Rey doesn’t have time to whine her displeasure because he's inside her again, in one brutal thrust. Then, he’s fucking her  _ hard _ , pummeling her tight muscles with his thick cock. He grips her ass tightly in his hand and grabs onto her hair with the other, arching her back and forcing her to take him fast and deep.

"Fuck baby, this is exactly where I want you," Ben snarls, pumping his hips so hard she issues breathy shrieks of pleasure.

If she thought his pace was rough yesterday, it’s nothing compared to the barrage he inflicts upon her now. His balls strike her clit and her pussy gushes around his length, as though in retaliation. His hips slap against her ass, hard and rhythmic, her thighs jiggling from his frantic pace as the incriminating sound of skin slapping skin fills her ears.

"I'm gonna come in you again, baby. Would you like that, Rey? Would you like me to fill you up?" He savagely pulls her hair harder until her back is arched as far as it will go. Her ass is pressed firmly against his hips, so his cock can go as deep as possible, from root to tip.

She’s completely at his mercy and she loves every second of it.

"I need it so bad," she says on a moan, as her ass jiggles and he works her hard and fast, his hips barely leaving the flesh of her ass before they return, slamming his cock into her tight channel.

"Yes, you fucking do," Ben growls, keeping her arched against him so her tits are angled out, her nipples pink and wet from his spit. They jiggle with each punishing thrust and all she can focus on is him gliding into her cunt at a mad, frantic pace. "You're all mine, baby. And I'm going to fucking  _ ruin _ this tight little pussy."

Rain thunders down over the house as Ben fucks her with wild abandon, his cock pounding and pumping inside her until his rhythm catches and his hips go erratic. A long, loud groan tears from his mouth and he keeps her arched against him, her ass flush against his hips and his length rooted to the hilt, so they are rocking in tandem, milking the cum from his cock with each fluid grind of their hips.

" _ Fuck _ , baby. Gonna fill you up, my good girl.  _ Just - like - that _ ."

And he does.


	8. Things Aren't Quite the Same

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben’s eyes darken and then he groans, drawing her mouth back to his for another bruising kiss. When he pulls away, his pupils are dilated.
> 
> “The things you say, Rey…” he trails off, taking a pent-up breath. “Let’s get in the shower.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real toss up here - we have more angsty memories coming our way and LOTS of smut and some tooth-rotting fluff. These two kids are finally figuring things out so we gotta give them some time to get all that randiness out of their system ;) As of this chapter, our memory portions are now dealing directly with the events that led to Rey and Ben not speaking for two years. 
> 
> Warnings ahead: Accidental voyeurism turned very intentional (honestly one of my faves). Rey is underage when this occurs, so heads up for that. Dom/sub continues in this chapter and we begin to see some ponderings of Daddy Kink as well - definitely heading into that territory very soon. 
> 
> Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian neighbours and for everyone else - enjoy your porn!!! <3

She is seventeen years old in this memory. Early November, sodden snow.

Her father drops her off at the curb outside Aunt Leia’s house. She remembers some old-time band playing on the radio right before she gets out of the car, some song her father likes to listen to this time of year even though, as far as she can tell, it’s the furthest song from yuletide that there ever was. She knows the song is named after a drug, but she cannot remember which one.

It is actually snowing - in California no less - and the sight is as rare as diamonds. She’s supposed to help decorate Aunt Leia’s house to get it ready for their annual Christmas dinner. Although it’s not even mid-November, they always celebrate early. It’s easier on her father this way.

Her mother died right before Christmas.

She and her father made the arrangement years ago to have their Christmas dinner in November. They open presents on Christmas Eve with Aunt Leia and Ben. Christmas Day is theirs to sleep in and doze in front of the television, watching lame sci-fi movies from the 70s and 80s. The kind where the aliens are puppets and the starships are models moving across backlit screens, with poked out dots for stars.

November is Aunt Leia’s time. To celebrate Christmas and Ben’s birthday as well.

Ben is a Scorpio. Leia likes to tell her this every year, usually after her aunt is about two glasses of wine in. By the time Leia has reached this level of festive drunkenness, Luke, Ben and whoever she happens to be married to at the time are playing pool or foosball in the basement.

“Ben is emotional, but he’ll never let on,” Aunt Leia informs her mythically, every year the same. “He is fragile. Proud and takes himself far too seriously. You, my dear, are a Pisces, which makes you patient enough to deal with his bullshit. Explains why you two get on so well.”

She’ll politely listen to her aunt, nodding in the right places until she finally releases her so she can sneak off somewhere else to listen to music and draw. In reality, she takes her aunt’s astrology readings about as seriously as she takes her father’s superstition about black cats. 

It’s what Ben loves about her, her healthy pragmatism that balances out his heavy-handed cynicism.

This year, Aunt Leia is out at a charity function and she won’t be back until sometime late in the evening. Leia wants her to get started early; get the lights on the tree and get all the knick-knacks out on the mantle and coffee table. Secretly, she thinks Aunt Leia does not really like to decorate at all. Her aunt has always been a bit of a lazybones, but she doesn’t mind. She loves decorating. 

Of course, Luke has picked up another shift at the hospital, dropping her off on his way into work. He usually skips out on this holiday tradition, anyway. Ben is supposed to be at school in an exam, which leaves her to decorate the house alone.

She uses her key to get in, finding the house quiet and dark with the lights all turned off.

It’s spooky, she remembers thinking at the time, with the house all gloomy like this. There are pictures all over the walls of Leia, Ben, Luke, and her. Baby pictures, music recitals photos of when Ben used to play piano in his high school band, before he switched to the guitar. 

There is the original copy of Ben’s adoption certificate, hanging in a frame. His adoption is not something Leia ever hid from him. Leia tells him - and everyone else - with great pride that he was planned and 100% wanted. 

The comparison sometimes hurts her, although she’s too young to realize why. She was an accident, however happy of one her father might claim her to be. It’s not something she likes to dwell on. She flicks on the living room lights and drops her school bag on the floor by the door. Her jacket follows suit, little snowflakes melting on the tile floor.

Then, she hears it. 

Upstairs, there is a faint sound. Rhythmic and… squeaking? She frowns and heads up the stairs without hesitation, wondering if Ben came home early from school. She makes it to the second-floor landing, her hand trailing along the cherry-wood banister. At the end of the hall is Ben’s bedroom. The door is almost closed the entire way, save for a small sliver of light shining through into the hallway.

A shadow moves across it and she stops, holding her breath.

Then the light returns, but she cannot hear anything better than she could downstairs. She creeps over the plush carpet Leia paid thousands to have the whole house redone in, and as she gets closer to his door, the sound grows louder.

Definitely squeaking, like he’s jumping up and down on his bed. The thought gives her pause and she almost bursts into laughter. The thought of Ben reducing himself to such childish joys as jumping on his bed is almost as ridiculous as the horoscopes Aunt Leia follows with near-religious intensity.

Now that she has crept closer, there is a new sound she can hear - soft moaning that she mistakes for a television at first. Something instinctually tells her to be quiet, that Ben doesn’t know she’s here and that something is happening in his room. Something private.

But she doesn’t stop. Perhaps she can’t at this point. She is far too curious, hazel eyes wide and head tilted towards the door so she can hear better. She’s about three feet away when she hears a much louder moan in what is unmistakably a woman’s voice. 

All the other noises suddenly become clearer, like that one loud moan has cranked up the clarity and volume on everything else.

Skin slaps skin, the sound harsh and repetitive. It sounds like Ben is clapping his hands – almost, but not quite. Maybe more like his is slapping his leg or arm. But that doesn’t make any sense, she thinks to herself, frowning as she nears the crack in the door.

The sound only grows louder and something unknown stirs in her lower belly, an adult awareness that she has never felt before. The squeaking continues, until the bed starts bumping into the wall. The sound surprises her and she skitters away for a second, her heart wild in her chest. When the thumping of the bed does not stop, she chews her lip and approaches his bedroom door cautiously. Her hands are sweating, and her underwear feels curiously damp, though she has no idea why. It is then that she deduces that she is, in fact, hearing bedsprings, but she knows that Ben is not jumping up and down on his bed.

He’s not alone in there. As though to prove her right, she hears more whispering and then there is a groan, in a much deeper voice. It’s Ben. She knows this and her lower stomach tingles with it.

“… _ mmm, please _ …” someone moans, very quietly. She knows it’s the same woman’s voice she heard before, but she doesn’t understand. Not yet. 

The slapping sound gets louder, faster.

Her breathing grows more ragged as she creeps forward some more until her vision is in line with the crack in the door. At first, she rears back in confusion, before redness overtakes her cheeks in a scarlet blush.

The details come to her short, brutal intervals.

Ben is on his bed. His hair is a mess, dark waves shifting in his eyes and sticking up from his head. The blankets are kicked off the floor. He is on his knees, his bare feet hanging off the edge of his bed. He is groaning softly under his breath and the cords of his neck are standing out. He is facing the door, so she can see the flushed lines of his sweat-soaked face and chest. 

He is  _ naked _ . 

It does not occur to her once to look away or go back downstairs. Not once. That awareness stirs once more within her, but there’s something more urgent about that feeling now. She feels warm all over, sweaty and heady. Her panties become wet, through no control of her own. She can’t see much beyond the tapered lines of his pelvis, where a light trail of dark hair disappears to his… 

She gulps. 

His hips are snapping forward in a brutal pace and his eyes are screwed up in a look of concentration. His plush lips are pulled in a grimace, though she soon realizes it’s not a grimace at all.

“Ask me again,” Ben murmurs, his voice rough and harsh.

“… _ please Ben _ …”

That is when her gaze snaps to the other person in the room. 

Below her cousin, on her hands and knees, is a woman. She can’t see her face very well – her long brown hair is mostly in the way – but she can tell she’s probably around Ben’s age. The woman is also naked. The woman is  _ also _ moaning, her fingers crooked into claws in the sheets. Her ass and hips jiggle from the rough brunt of his thrusts. Her tits sway forward, much larger and fuller than hers will ever be.

“Again,” Ben growls and she has to literally bite her tongue so she does not gasp at the roughness to his voice. He’s completely unrecognizable to her at this moment, but she cannot tear her eyes off him. Not even if the house was burning down. 

“ _ Please _ ,” the woman begs, somewhere between a whine and a moan.

Suddenly, Ben leans over the woman, slowing his pace as he grinds his pelvis into her bottom.

Outside the door, every muscle in her body goes rigid as she watches with fascination and unknown desire. There is no time to feel ashamed, not when her brain is still trying to process everything she is seeing. She can see the curve of Ben’s ass, but it is his face that she’s completely focused on. 

He grabs the woman’s hair in his fist and yanks her head up so he can whisper in her ear.

“Please what, little girl?”

For an instant, she is confused. The woman is clearly not a little girl, so why would he call her that? But then, the woman is answering him, and she forgets her confusion. Everything is honed down to the look of lust in her cousin’s eyes – but there is something else there as well. A dejected sort of need that he has not bothered to conceal, possibly because the woman cannot see his face from this angle. 

But  _ she _ can. 

When the woman says the next two words, Ben’s face transforms into something bestial; a carved mask of utter need that she suddenly knows (without knowing how or  _ why _ she knows) has little to do with the woman he is with.

“ _ Please daddy _ ,” the woman says and though she has no way of knowing this yet, those two little words are going to change things just as irrevocably as what she is witnessing today.

Ben snarls, his lips parting as a long moan tear from him, and he leans back up, slapping the woman’s ass in response. Then his hips are slamming against her, his pelvis almost a blur with how fast he is moving.

_ They’re fucking _ , she thinks, completely stunned.  _ That’s Ben and Ben is fucking. This is sex.  _

Finn told her what sex is last year. Gay sex, straight sex, group sex, masturbation - he knows about all of it. He showed her and the others a bunch of different porn videos - some with men fucking men, some with women fucking women, and some with people of all genders fucking together in one big group. At the time, she had pretended to be outwardly disgusted, but really she was utterly fascinated. Sex, she had discovered, was something she was interested in after all. 

She’s not fascinated right now, though. She doesn’t quite know what she is.

“Is this what you need, sweetheart?” Ben growls this in a way that makes her both want to back away from the sound and step closer at the same time. 

The woman says something unintelligible but she’s not really listening to her anymore.

Her eyes are riveted on Ben, flitting between his pumping hips and the pleasure-pain of his expression. Her stomach is a corkscrew, that awareness warm and curling down to somewhere she has barely paid attention to before today. The woman continues to moan, which only adds fuel to the fire, making her squirm on the spot, her thighs rubbing together in a bid for friction.

“I’ll give you everything you need, sweetheart,” he rasps and he sounds almost undone now, his chest red with exertion and his eyes glassy with pleasure. “Fuck, r-”

But then he cuts himself off, which is likely for the best because she has the opportunity to replay his words.

_ Sweetheart. _

His nickname for her – he is using his nickname for  _ her _ with this woman…

She backs away from the door, her insides first turning to ice, then hot with jealousy. She does not want to see anymore. She does not want to hear anymore. She wishes she never came over, that she was home and blissfully ignorant that this woman and Ben are…

She goes back downstairs without making a sound. In the living room, she finds the Christmas boxes with Aunt Leia’s curly handwriting on them. One says “X-Mas Ornaments” and another “X-Mas Lights”. There are more boxes, but she barely takes them in. Her chest hurts and her stomach feels like she has swallowed a live wire. 

The soft thumping from upstairs that gets louder. Repetitive, like the pounding of Ben’s hips.

And she just snaps.

A glass Christmas bauble sits on top of one of the boxes. It’s old – far older than her and Ben. Older than Luke and Leia, even. It was a trinket of Leia and Luke’s mother, a pretty thing of hollowed glass and intricate gold linework. She picks it up, not really seeing it or anything else. Just the image of Ben and that woman tattooed into her eyelids, where she’ll see it on agonizing replay for the next two years.

She hurls the priceless ornament against the far wall in a musical crash of broken glass.

Upstairs, the thumping abruptly stops.

Someone is taking deep, heaving breaths and she doesn’t realize until a few seconds have gone by that it’s her. She does not clean the glass up. Instead, she walks in jerky steps to the back door and goes outside. The door closes with a bang and she viciously hopes that if Ben didn’t hear the glass breaking, he hears the door slamming.

A swing set sits in the backyard, by the fence separating the yard from a deep culvert. It’s old, a little rusty and freezing cold when she sits down on the third swing, facing away from the house and to the small creek that runs behind the backyard. The third swing was always her favourite growing up because Ben always liked the fourth one. This way, they could swing together, whooping and screaming profanities at the sky, laughing like lunatics until she felt like they might not return to Earth. That they might float up there together, forever as fixtures in the sky.

She forgot her coat, but her anger keeps her warm. She does not know where it all comes from, this spinning vitriol. She is not a spiteful girl. She has never even been in a fight. Hell, whenever her friends get into it (usually Rose and Poe), she’s always the peacekeeper between them. Patching up all those loose ends so everyone is happy again.

Some time passes in which she loses the feeling in her fingers and her nose gets runny. It could be all of a few minutes or an hour. She’s not really sure and she doesn’t really care because she is infuriated in a way that almost frightens her.

Behind her, the back door opens and closes.

She does not turn around, does not offer greetings or smiles. There is a dullness settling into her temples that will soon blossom into a migraine. She picks at the pulls in her sweater and notices that her stockings are full of runs. Like she’s some little kid, mindless of the boundaries around her. 

She doesn’t want to be this person anymore. This kid with no knowledge of the world.

Footsteps crunch through frosty grass and as snowflakes litter her brown hair, she barely reacts when her coat is put on over her shoulders. Then, the swing next to her creaks and she knows without looking that it is Ben.

He sniffs, the only indication that the cold is affecting him.

“You got out of school early today.” She sounds like she has a head cold and she immediately regrets speaking. It’s all giving her away, these choked up syllables.

“What happened to my mom’s ornament?” 

He sounds cautious, though she’s not sure if it’s because of her tone, the fact that she refuses to look at him, or because of what she interrupted. Likely a bit of all three.

“Will your friend be helping us decorate tonight?” she says instead of answering him.

Even though she’s not looking at Ben, she can practically feel the way he tenses up all at once. There is a long pause when all she can hear is the wind and her heart beating in her chest, but she cannot bring herself to look at him. Not now.

“She went home,” he finally replies, low and solemn.

“Right.” Her smile is bitter and awful with its adultness. The fact that she is crying is irrelevant, of course. “You should go inside before you catch a cold. Wouldn’t be good to get sick during your finals, right?”

“I’m not leaving you out here, kid.” He’s carefully flat when he speaks. Carefully neutral, with just a hint of exasperation.

She hates it, all those blunted edges, so she says the first thing that comes to mind, turning him to with a vehemence that startles both of them.

“You’re fragile. Not me.”

Ben is already looking at her, his hair mussed, and his clothes haphazardly thrown on, buttons missed and collar crooked. His cheeks are still red, though she’s not sure if that’s from what he was doing before, or from shame.

“I know.” 

Then he stands, his lips folding together before he approaches her. He plucks her hand from her lap and when he pulls her to her feet, she does not resist him.

Their orbits are too entwined for such trivialities.

His chest is warm when he tucks her face there and he smells like rain and him, and neither of them says a word when she cries into his shirt. When Aunt Leia comes home later, the glass is quietly cleaned up and Ben tells his mother that he dropped the bauble when he was lifting one of the boxes.  Neither of them mentions the incident that led to the bauble being destroyed.

This is her most hated memory.

*

**Ben:** I can’t go home early, you turkey. What about all my appointments?

**Rey:** Can’t one of your nurses do them? Jessa seemed like she could handle extra responsibility… amongst other things.

**Ben:** … are you really still upset about that?

**Rey:** No.

**Ben:** …

**Rey:** Well, mostly no.

**Ben:** …

**Rey:** Are you sure there’s nothing between you two?

**Ben:** There it is.

**Rey:** Shut up and answer the question.

**Ben:** That’s a confusing set of commands, Rey. I can’t shut up if I’m supposed to answer your question.

**Rey:** I’m going to tell Mitaka that you’re being mean to me. He and I are getting pretty chummy, you know. He’s already told me some stories about you in college.

**Ben:** …which stories?

**Rey:** Well, there was one involving you being piss drunk out of your mind and stealing his make-up bag. Something about how you looked really pretty with blue mascara on.

**Ben:** I’m going to kill him.

**Rey:** I kind of want to see that for myself. Get you all prettied up for me ;)

**Ben:** As long as we’re naked, I’ll play any games you want to, baby.

  
  


Rey puts her phone down for a moment, blushing wildly as she checks the break room of Mitaka’s art studio to ensure she is alone. She is wearing a cute blue blazer that she and Kaydel picked out together earlier at the mall, and a black pencil skirt with a white blouse. It’s been a day since she and Ben had sex on her living room couch, and although a small, rational voice in her head tells her that she will see him again soon, she is also nervous. He promised they wouldn’t go back to the way things were before, but a part of her is going to be insecure for a while.

When Rey looks at her phone again, there is another message waiting for her.

  
  


**Ben:** And for the record, no. There is nothing between Jessa and I, or anyone else.

  
  


Rey smiles at the message and then leans forward to type out one of her own.

  
  


**Rey:** Not anyone?

**Ben:** Just you, sweetheart.

She grins, pushing out a low breath as that warm feeling spreads across her chest and up to her face. She does not know what to call this feeling, but it’s overwhelming and makes her want to run and laugh and cry out. But she won’t, of course. Mitaka’s snobby clients probably wouldn’t appreciate that very much.

**Rey:** Gotta get back to work. I’ll see you tonight?

**Ben:** I’ll be there around seven. You better be naked when I get there, little girl. 

Rey pushes out a quiet gasp, her eyes widening. Telltale heat spreads to her lower tummy, scattering into pleasant tingles. She  _ remembers _ . Hearing him say that, even though it was not to her, hearing him in her memory for two years as she replayed those words over and over again…

She stares at her phone, chewing on her lip as she decides what she is going to respond with, but she loses her nerve. Instead of sending him what she really wants to say, she simply replies, _ Yes, sir _ .

“Close enough,” Rey murmurs and then giggles a little before gathering her lunchbox and getting ready to head back up to the front of the studio. For the rest of her shift, she’s smiling so much, Mitaka genially asks her if she had a cocktail with her lunch that day.

*

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Ben. For the millionth time, I want you to stay over tonight. Dad won’t be home until tomorrow, so we’re in the clear.” Rey smiles when she says this, leading him upstairs by the hand to her room. 

He comes willingly enough, though he pauses halfway up to pinch her butt through her skirt.

Rey shrieks and Ben chases her up the stairs, easily catching her when they reach the landing. His tongue is in her mouth before their lips meet and then they’re making out under the sparkle of the chandelier, pressed up against each other and breathing harshly.

Ben pulls away, his eyes dark as he presses his hands under her blazer to run up and down her sides. “I seem to recall telling you to be naked for when I got here.”

Rey blushes because that is what she does and she looks away, shy in her bones. Ben cups her face and brings her gaze to his again, a stern little furrow to his brows that makes her breath stutter.

“I-I had to stay late. For training,” she clarifies. “I just got home too, so…”

“Well, I guess I’ll have to undress you myself,” Ben murmurs and the hand cupping her face slides down her jaw, past her throat and to the collar of her shirt. He tickles the skin of her cleavage, his fingertips light and grazing.

Breaking off with delighted giggles, Rey drags him to her room, squeaking when he leans over her, nipping her throat and shoulder like he can’t stand to be away from her for even a second. She leads Ben to her bedroom, flicking on the light on the way. 

“Nice digs,” Ben remarks, shooting her a saucy smirk over his shoulder.

The last time he was in here, he had fled from her room after kissing her, so he hardly had time to take in the changes she’s made in the last few years. She painted over the pink on her walls, replacing it with a deep teal her father hated but allowed her to pick out nonetheless. Lots of her paintings and drawings cover her walls, like elsewhere in the house. Some unfinished pieces lie in the corner, under a sheet. A framed picture of her mother stands on her nightstand and some medals from school on her dresser. She has a large mirror over her vanity that faces her bed.

Sometimes, she likes to watch herself. Rey grows hot and flushed at the thought.

“We should shower.” Ben takes his shirt off casually like he’s at home, and her gaze gets stuck on the broadness of his shoulders. He tosses his shirt on her nightstand and undoes his pants, leaving them loose around his waist. He looks so tall in her room, taking up all the space with his broad shoulders and long limbs. “Had a really long day at the office, today. Would be nice to rinse off.”

Rey sags with disappointment when her brain finally computes what he is saying to her. “Oh, sure. There are lots of towels in there. Shampoo and stuff, so...”

Ben frowns at her for a moment and then looks away, unsure. “I meant that we could shower together… But no pressure. I don’t want you to feel like -”

Rey breaks into a wide grin and then she leaps on him, throwing her arms around his neck like the predator she is. Ben grunts with surprise, his hands coming up just in time so he doesn’t drop her. She kisses him before her nerves can get the better of her. Just because she wants to, just because she finally can.

Ben groans and then one of his hands dips down to her ass, squeezing her there while his tongue slips into her mouth. Her skirt prevents her from wrapping her legs around him like she wants to but Ben quickly solves that problem by hiking her skirt up to her hips. Then she’s wrapping her legs around his waist and his hand is resting on the lacy material of her panties, squeezing and rubbing her.

Their tongues tangle as he blindly carries her into the bathroom then, using his elbow to turn on the light. Her hands are in his hair as they make out passionately. She can’t get enough of this, touching him and being close together. She runs one hand over the column of his neck and uses her fingernails to trace his Adam’s apple. The muscles of his shoulders bunch under her hand as she takes the lead and delves her tongue into his mouth. Her technique isn’t great, but whatever she lacks in experience, she’ll more than makeup with enthusiasm. 

He’s fondling her ass, impatiently curling his fingers under her panties to cup her skin to skin. His other hand fisting the long sheaf of her hair as he holds her tight against him. Their lips move together, wet and heady.

This time, Rey is the first to pull away and she’s thrilled by the stunned look in Ben’s eyes.

_ I did that _ , she thinks with pride.

Without really thinking about it, Rey brings her hand up and brushes his cheekbone with her fingertips, tracing them up to his eyes. His breath stills, the lust in his eyes softening to something tentative and sweet.

“I love this part.” 

“What part?” Ben’s hushed, even though they are the only two in the house. He looks at her like he'll have to watch the world burn if he looks away.

“Here, by your eyes and cheeks,” Rey says, looking to where she’s brushing his skin. His eyes flutter closed at the softness of her touch and she leans forward to kiss the crest of each of his cheeks, moving on to his closed eyes and then the tip of his nose. She keeps brushing her fingers across his face, following with gentle little kisses that make Ben's arms tightened around her.

" _ Rey _ ." 

She loves the way he says her name, all awed, breathless and low.

“I don’t know why I love it…" she murmurs into his temple, inhaling the scent of him before nuzzling his cheekbones again. "But I do. I always have.”

She knows she’s not talking about his delicate bone structure anymore.

Ben's eyes flutter open, as she curls her fingers around his ear. He swallows thickly and his hand slides up her ribs, over her breast and then cups her cheek. He touches her like she’s made of porcelain like she’s too precious for the dark things she knows he wants from her. His throat bobs and his eyes are soft, beguiling, and intent upon her in a way that makes her breathless.

“You’re everything to me. You always have been.” Her heart patters a little faster at his words, that warm feeling intensifying sweetly within her. “It was different before, of course. You were this plucky little kid my uncle wanted me to watch out for where he couldn’t… And then you grew up. You’re beautiful, Rey. I… I don’t deserve you, or any of this, but I’m here for you. Always. In whatever way you’ll have me.”

Then, he’s kissing her again and it’s so much different than it was before. It’s slow, exploratory and sweet, his tongue gentle when he rubs it against hers. His hand slides into her hair again, squeezing it gently into his fist. Her arms curl under his, gripping his shoulders for dear life because there it goes - the entire world is dropping out from under her and there’s only Ben, to anchor her here.

The kiss does not stay gentle for long.

He angles her head, his lips moving against her ardently, and then with hunger, sucking and pulling and  _ taking _ . She sighs contently, pushing her breasts into his chest in a gesture that's less about sexiness and much more about getting as close to him as possible.

Ben pulls away suddenly, and she goes to follow after him, but he smiles at her.

“Are you hurting, baby?”

For a moment, she has no idea how to answer that.  _ No _ , she wants to tell him. _ Are you crazy? I’ve never been so happy in my life. _

But then she knows what he means, and she shrugs one shoulder, blushing a little.

“I’m a bit sensitive from yesterday,” Rey murmurs meekly. 

She does not tell him that he worked her so hard, she was walking a little crooked for the first half of her day. But some small discomfort is worth it, in her mind.

Ben’s eyes darken and then he groans, drawing her mouth back to his for another bruising kiss. When he pulls away, his pupils are dilated.

“The things you say, Rey…” he trails off, taking a pent-up breath. “Let’s get in the shower.”

He places her on her feet and turns to fiddle with the knobs of the shower. She can’t help but blush when she starts to undress again; she's not sure she'll ever get over her shyness. He’s fully turned back to her when she pulls her blazer and top off. Her bra goes next and Ben doesn’t say anything, nor does he move forward to help her. He just watches, his jaw tightening when her nipples pebble in the cool air. She shimmies her skirt and panties down, with no finesse because she’ll never be a stripping to porn music kind of girl.

Once she’s naked, Ben’s gaze makes the slow journey from her tits to her pussy. His hand brushes her hip before he uses a finger to part the lips of her cunt, presses ever so gently against her clit. She gasps, everything extra sensitive now, and he groans again, his teeth winking out when he bites his lip.

Ben pulls away and slides his pants and boxers off, and then wordlessly holds out his hand to help her in the shower. He’s already half-hard, his cock bobbing with his movements. With Rey in the shower, he follows behind her, his burly body making her feel small and fragile. The shower curtain closes and then they are in a world apart, steam and water lighting on their skin. Where they could be the only two people in the world.

They wash each other’s hair first. She is almost purring by the time he rinses the conditioner out of her hair and then it's his turn. Rey giggles when he has to bend down so she can reach because of how damned tall he is, but then her giggles turn to mewls when he takes one of her nipples in his mouth.

“Here too?” Ben asks, breathless against her skin, his hands gripping her hips. “Are you sensitive here too, Rey?”

“Everywhere,” she keens.

He growls like an animal at that and then he grabs the soap to begin washing her body. He starts with her back and works down to her legs, his hands lingering on the globes of her ass. For a minute, his finger slides between her cheeks and he presses against where his tongue was yesterday. Moaning in shock at the feeling, she arches her back again on a whine, her tits bouncing with her movements. She thinks he might try to put his finger inside but he pulls away and she doesn't know whether to be disappointed or not.

When she turns around to give him her front, he’s rock hard. His cock juts up against his stomach, curved and throbbing like a heartbeat.

Rey stares at it for a moment, chewing her lip, before she peers up at him through wet eyelashes. “Does it hurt?”

“No.” He shakes his head, those dark locks plastered to his forehead from the spray of the shower. She reaches out and pushes them away, but when she goes to rock down to the balls of her feet, his hand shoots out and pulls her in. Then, they’re pressed together, connected all over. His thighs touch hers, his cock hot and hard against her stomach. Her head rests just under his chin and his arms are around her, holding her to him as they close their eyes and let the hot shower water run over them.

She wants to say it. Right now, before her courage fails her.

“I love you, Ben,” Rey utters the words into his collarbone and then she waits there, out on the tightrope between two mountain peaks. He’s her lifeline. He’s her fall, her parachute, her slow glide to solid ground.

His hands slip across her wet skin until one large hand is cupping the back of her head, holding her even tighter to him. His lips are at her temple, his cheek pressed firmly to the top of her head and she can feel the words rattle in his chest before they escape into the air, rescuing her from the nosedive. From the long plummet.

“I love you too, Rey.”

After an indeterminable amount of time passes, he draws away a little. His eyes are dark in here and she finds she likes that just as much as every other hue she has counted there, from honey to gold, to umber, to wild hazel. Every shade is hers, in some way. Ben traces a finger over her lips, his eyes dark and rapt on what he’s doing. Then, he grabs the bottle of soap and squeezes some out in his hand. He cleans her, starting with her shoulders. His hands drag softly over her tits and she gasps at how sensitized her nipples are from all his relentless suckling yesterday.

“C-careful,” Rey squeaks, high-pitched.

“Yeah?” Ben says lowly, running his soapy hands underneath her achy tits and then over them again, heedless of her words. He’s got a little half-smile on his face, and there’s something predatory about it that makes her want to forego the shower altogether. That makes her want to do and say all the things he likes, so he will make her cum. “What if I said I like how tender you are right now? Hm? How  _ reactive _ you are to my touch?”

He brushes her nipples again, lightly, before circling back for more. She pulls a sharp breath, her head falling back and her body tight.

“ _ Ben _ ,” she keens.

He makes another low sound in his throat, rumbling like a bear. His hands circle lower, ever so gently brushing against her sex. He cups her there, hissing when she cries out. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s a lot. Even the pressure of his hands makes her feel extra sensitive and tingly. He rubs all his fingers at once, careful to avoid her clit and just rub the outside.

“Good girl,” he rasps, crowding closer to her until her back hits the tiles on the other side of the shower. She thinks about the thing that she wanted to text him earlier, but it doesn’t feel right in this moment. Maybe soon, she’ll work up the courage because really, that one little word is all she’s thought about for two years now.

The water rinses the soap away and then he’s dropping down on his knees before her.

“What are you…” she starts with surprise, but then he looks up at her and that look alone silences her from speech.

“Hush, Rey.” His dark eyes are ravenous as he hooks her leg over his shoulder and then he’s staring at her aching cunt like a man starved. “If you make too much noise, I’m going to fuck you  _ really _ hard. Make you fucking scream with it, baby. You have to be good for me, or I’ll lose control.”

She meets his hooded eyes, a feeling of delight spreading across her chest. They’re playing a game now. A dark and dangerous game.

“Yes,” Rey says demurely.

“Yes what?” he growls, his mouth inches away from her cunt.

Her stomach tenses up with nerves and she  _ wants _ to say it, even though he has not asked for it, or even hinted at it, even though he has no idea that she heard him ask for that two years ago. But she can’t. Not yet.

“Yes, Ben,” she says instead, in barely a whisper.

“Good girl.”

She preens at his words just as the tip of his tongue touches down on her clit. Then, she hisses a breath through her teeth only for Ben to sternly meet hers again. Somehow, she squashes the sound that wants to tear out of her and he returns his attention to her pussy. His licks are feather-light, exploratory and achingly gentle. His tongue circles lower, brushing against her opening as his nose rubs against her clit.

Her hips buck ever so slightly, her teeth buried in the flesh of her lip. Her fingers tentatively reach for his hair and she draws them through those dark, wet locks to his hummed approval, her teeth locking over her lips to keep her sounds contained. He draws the tip of his tongue over her clit again, light and rhythmic. Wet and hot. Then he repeats the motion, over and over again. Rey struggles to contain her pleasure, her hips bucking against his face and a hand pressed against her mouth to keep in her sounds.

Suddenly, Ben reaches up and rips her hand away from her mouth, dark eyes enraptured on her face.

“But you said, I had to… I had to… k-keep quiet,” Rey says between labored breaths, struggling not to moan and thrash and beg him for more as he keeps up his kitten licks. She doesn’t want to lose their game, after all.

“I did, didn’t I?” Ben pulls away for an instant. He sounds genuinely thoughtful and he rolls his lips in that way of his that drives Rey insane.

Then, with no warning, he presses one large hand against her lower stomach and lunges on her cunt, pulling her clit between his lips and sucking her  _ hard _ . Right before she screams, pleasure curling in her lower tummy to the point of almost pain, she realizes that she was never meant to win.

And her cunt clenches at the thought of just what he’s going to do to her.

Ben is on his feet in a whirl of movement, and then she’s somehow in his arms, her cunt still fluttering through her orgasm when he lifts her off her feet and slams her against the shower wall. Her fingernails bury in his shoulders and although he hisses from the pain, he leans in to nip at her throat, her skin caught between his teeth as he rumbles a stifled  _ mmmmm _ into her neck. 

They’re like animals, the two of them; clawing and biting and claiming one another.

Liquid heat pools in her lower abdomen, as she moans loudly right next to his ear, knowing what that torrid sound will do to him. Like a reflex, his hips buck against hers, his long, hard cock brushing against her pussy and lower stomach. His tongue is hot and wet as he laves up her throat and then he finds another spot, biting her just on the side of discomfort. She loves it anyways; loves the roughness of his lust. Loves what she brings out in him.

Just as Ben releases the skin of her throat, she winds her fingers into his hair and pulls.  _ Hard. _ His moan is long and drawn out, ending in a rough growl that goes straight to her cunt.

“You absolute fucking  _ tease _ ,” he growls into her ear, snapping his hips so hard, she cries out from dragging motion on her clit. He licks across her neck, his fingers digging divots in her thighs.

"Oh Ben," she moans into his ear, before sucking on his earlobe.

His voice toe-curlingly low and raspy when whispers into her skin, “You know what you do to me. Don’t you, Rey?”

He flexes his hips again, his cock slicked up from her soaking wet cunt. It drags just the right way and she tugs his ear again with her teeth, earning her a groan she feels all the way down to her bones.

"You feel so good," Rey whines, nipping his creamy skin as she runs her fingernails along his scalp. This should feel wrong, what they’re doing. But nothing has ever felt more right to her.

"So do you, baby," Ben rasps brokenly into her throat as they rock together, his cock achingly hard against her sopping pussy.

Then, before he can stop her, she flexes her hips against him, dragging the lips of her cunt against his cock and beating him to the punch. Ben rocks back against her on a groan, hard enough to slam her into the wall again.

His voice goes even deeper, turning into that passionate snarl that makes her so achingly needy for him. "When I fuck you, I'm going to work this little pussy  _ so. Fucking. Hard _ ."

“ _ Uhnn _ ,” she gasps, thrusting back into him until they find a rhythm that’s theirs. Her clit drags over his cock in just the right way, making her whine from the sensation. He groans in response and nips at her skin, his breath heaving from his lungs.

He’s not inside her, not yet, and she wants to see just how far she can push him until he snaps.

As Ben presses frantic kisses to her shoulder, she looks down to find the side of his neck is exposed. She doesn’t really think about it when she does it. There’s an animal, living inside her skin, making her heart race and her blood temperature rise, and all she wants is Ben. He is hers, just as much as she is his, and suddenly, all she wants to do is prove that to him.

Rey leans forward and  _ bites _ where his neck and shoulder meet. A heady, possessive sound leaves her, muffled into his slick skin and suddenly, she gets exactly what she wants.

“ _ Fuck _ !” Ben roars and for a brief second, she’s worried that she has hurt him until suddenly all she can see are his dark eyes. His lips are parted, all red and wet, and the look he gives her is pure carnal need.

His hand leaves her for a second, positioning blunt pressure against her opening and before she can blink, he slams her down on his cock, all the way to the hilt.

Rey gives a keening cry, and then his teeth are fastened to the knob of her shoulder before he’s fucking into her with the wildness of a beast. The shower provides a lulling white noise, but it’s soon overpowered by the sounds she cannot help but make. She sobs his name, over and over, her hands buried in the hair on the nape of his neck. His mouth is everywhere, sucking the skin where her shoulder and neck meet as though in retaliation, his teeth nibbling on her earlobe, his lips hot and wet against hers, swallowing all the sounds she makes for him.

He fucks into her steadily, rocking her up and down on his throbbing length. Their skin slaps together, lewd and blisteringly hot as she pants into his jaw and cheek, moaning and crying out at the feeling of him hammering into her.

“Fuck, I love you so much,” Ben rumbles into her lips, and then he's licking into her mouth, their tongues tangling as her tits bounce against his chest. His breath catches, coming out as rough groans of pleasure.

“Love...you....too,” she pants back to him, and then he is  _ pounding _ into her, making her scream in just the way he promised he would make her.

"Say...it...again," he commands in a gravelly tone that sounds nothing like him. His cock works into her hard as promised, as he pins her to the shower wall and impales her with punishing thrusts.

"I - I love you, Ben," she moans out between panted breaths, his name ending in a keening cry.

"Fuck Rey. I love you so much, baby. So much," he groans, kissing her shortly before that becomes too much for both them and they heave for air, their foreheads touching as they stare into each other's eyes.

Her pussy contracts with another orgasm and when it comes, it's different than before; an explosion of warmth, making her rasp his name in her throat, making her head smack off the shower wall as explosions of light shoot across her closed eyelids. 

When Rey comes down, he is fucking her so relentlessly, all she can do is keen and warble and shriek through the feeling of his thick cock working through tight muscle, sore and spent, but somehow still wet and trembling with renewed pleasure.

“I told you,” Ben snarls into her ear before he licks the skin there. His cock gets even harder, and when it throbs, she knows he won’t last much longer. “I told you that you’re mine, Rey. And I fucking meant it.”

He comes not two minutes later with her name on his lips and his cock rooted deep inside her as he grinds his pelvis into hers. His cum is stuffed so deep she’ll never come clean, and the bruise she has left on his neck is purple and lovebitten, marking him as hers. 

They’re one and the same, connected all over, in tiny nerve endings that explode and then fall back together.


	9. We'll Keep the Fires Alight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What did my dad say?” she says, panting and attempting to keep them on topic before they end up fucking on her bed again.
> 
> “He said yes.”
> 
> Rey pulls back to stare down at Ben with a wide grin. His eyes are sparkling like onyx, his face pink and flushed. “Really?”
> 
> “Really.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy smutty-fluff goodness, Batman! 
> 
> This chapter contains the last memory before we get into what happened at the family cottage. Annnnnnd I have started the last chapter, which feels crazy to me! I've been working on this story for so long that I can't believe it's almost over. I foresee a Ben POV chapter in our near future, which will really help explain his side of things. More to come on that soon!
> 
> This chapter is really focusing on establishing the connection between Ben and Rey. The next chapter is going to be Explicit AF. I am actually kind of nervous for it lol... but all in good time. ;)
> 
> Anywho, enjoy this next instalment! <3

She is seventeen in this memory. It is late November.

_ Clann _ plays softly from her iPod, echoing across her bedroom She has not seen Ben in nearly two weeks, though he has called the house looking for her, desperate to make amends. She wonders if he would be so desperate if he knew what she saw. 

Luke has asked her what happened several times, and she tells him that they argued. She cannot recall what lie she made up, only that Luke eventually let it go.

He has gotten pretty good at that, lately.

Despite her anger and bitter jealousy, despite her mixed feelings of guilt, there are parts of that night that she cannot get out of her head, no matter how hard she tries to distract herself. While finishing a history paper a few nights ago, she found herself staring off into the distance, thinking about the redness of Ben’s chest as he drove his hips into that woman’s. When cleaning the bathroom yesterday, she paused to think about the way Ben slapped the woman’s ass, like he was punishing her for being naughty.

Most of all though, she thinks about what he and that woman said to each other.

_ Please what, little girl? _

_ Please daddy. _

She thinks about it. And thinks some more. She thinks about it when she goes to sleep at night, and then again when she awakes. Though there are dark emotions associated with this memory, there is something else as well. Something that has been buried underneath adoration and perhaps a touch of self-denial as well for many years now.

A burgeoning, crimson feeling that makes her panties wet and her breath hitch.

Her father is not home. Ben called earlier, but she did not answer. She does not have a cell phone yet, despite begging her father for one. Her friends are all cramming for exams, which leaves her with nothing to do on a Friday night.

Then, she remembers the porn video Finn showed her months ago. And she gets an idea.

Her laptop is covered with various band stickers Ben got for her from concerts he’s gone to over the years. She pulls her laptop onto her thighs, reclining in her pillows on her bed. Then, because she doesn't know any porn sites by name, Googles what she is looking for.

She stops.

Types again.

Deletes the words.

Pauses once more.

Then, looking at her closed bedroom door guiltily (despite knowing that no one will be home for hours), she retypes the words and hits enter before she can stop herself. A multitude of results come up and she goes with the first one, thinking that she will have to start somewhere. 

Ironically, it is the first result that will end up being the one she watches, over and over again, for the next two years.

The thumbnail depicts a tall, burly man with black hair. He is maybe thirty years old, though she cannot tell for certain. The girl kneeling at his feet is wearing a pink see-through tube top and a pair of yellow shorts so short that you can practically see her pussy. The girl looks to be around her age, maybe older. 

She clicks on the thumbnail.

Things progress quickly in the video. First, the girl starts giving the man a blowjob. He tugs on one of her pigtails as she bobs her head up and down. Somehow, the girl fits his whole cock down her throat, which is no small feat. He tells her she is a good little girl and that she deserves to cum.

She stares at them, completely transfixed. She can feel it before she shoves a tentative hand down her pants – she is soaking wet already. Her lips part as she rubs hesitantly at her clit, and then with more purpose when the men bends the girl over and starts fucking her from behind.

Downstairs, the front door opens and closes, but she does not hear it.

“Are you a good girl?” the man asks the girl in the video, pounding steadily into her.

She whines a little, her hazel eyes wide and fixed on her laptop screen.

“Yes, daddy!” the girl cries out.

Before the video is finished, she is already cumming. She does not bother to keep her voice down, moaning through the aftershocks (and maybe saying Ben’s name a few times). She is not concerned with anyone hearing her because there is not supposed to be anyone home. By the time she comes down from her mind-blowing orgasm, she shakily turns off the video and shoves the computer away from her.

And from somewhere that sounds like the staircase leading upstairs, she hears a  _ thud _ – like someone stubbing their toe. She sits up, her breath getting caught in her throat, just when she hears someone swearing under their breath. 

Someone that sounds suspiciously like her cousin.

Her eyes go wide, and she practically flies off her bed, wiping her hand quickly on her pant leg. She does not open her door all the way, peering around her door to the gloomy hallway. She sees no one there, but before she goes to close her door, she hears the sound of the front door closing, albeit very quietly. Like the person leaving does not want her to know they are there.

She closes her bedroom door and slides down the back of it, her face flaming red when she hears the distinct sound of The Falcon’s engine coming on in the driveway, before peeling out into the street and off into the night.

“Fuck,” Rey says, closing her eyes and bumping her head against her door.

*

When Rey wakes up snuggled deep under the blankets, it takes her longer than it should to realize something is different. There is warmth curled around her back and a steady stream of air puffing along the back of her neck. She burrows closer on instinct and that is when she notices there’s an arm tossed over her middle. A large warm hand gathers her closer to the warmth at her back before everything stills behind her once more.

_ Ben _ , she thinks, a tentative smile stretching across her face.

He is curled around her protectively, his grasp loose and relaxed. He is clearly still asleep, his breathing deep and even. She can’t remember the last time they fell asleep together. When they started getting older, Luke and Leia had put a stop to their sleepovers - not in an overly aggressive or concerned manner, more in a gentle way to let them know it might not be appropriate for two cousins with an eight-year age gap to nap together. Their parents have always loved how close they are; for parents who weren’t home much, it was helpful to have them to watch out for each other.

But they’re together now, though she somehow doubts either of their parents would approve. Naked and entwined in her bed as the glow of early morning shines through the blinds. She can feel a telltale hardness pressed against her bottom and when she gently pushes against it, Ben’s arm tightens around her.

The things they did in her shower yesterday. The things  _ she _ did. The things they  _ said _ ...

_ Fuck, I love you so much. _

That was real. Ben, his words, all of it.

She turns over in his arms, looking at him with an expression of such naked adoration, she would be blushing if he were awake to see it. His face is utterly relaxed in a way she rarely gets to see anymore. The lines around his mouth and eyes are gone, and he looks so painfully young, he could be a teenager again.

Her brooding, mercurial teenage idol, gross cigarettes, Converse high-tops and all.

“I missed you,” Rey whispers as quietly as she can.

Ben does not stir, his eyelashes resting against his cheeks and making him appear far too fragile for this world. She lifts a hand, brushing a finger over his cheeks again, in a touch that’s barely there at all. 

Then she spots the bite on his shoulder. 

It is purple today and ringed with a bruise. She does not feel remotely bad about it. In fact, she feels… Possessive. In a completely unconscious way, as she continues to trace the contours of his face. When she reaches his lips, there’s an exhale and then he nips her finger. She nearly jumps out of her skin, her eyes widening, when she finds him looking at her through bleary eyes, the softest and most achingly happy smile on his sleepy face.

“How long were you awake?” Rey whispers, trying to cover up for the fact that she was just staring at him like a creep while he was sleeping.

“Like twenty seconds?” Ben says and then drags her closer before she can hide her face in humiliation. “Where you going, sweetheart?”

His voice is this deep, rasping baritone first thing in the morning and her stomach explodes like there are fireworks deep inside her. 

“Nowhere,” she murmurs, still caught up in taking in every detail of  _ this  _ Ben. This quiet, gentle giant who is looking at her like she solves the equation for gravity, or something equally preposterous. She looks away, pretending to stare at something on his chest.

Of course, Ben doesn’t buy that for a second.

“Don’t.” He drags her up in the pillows so her face is level with his, where she can’t hide away. She really has no hope to escape with this man. He is strong enough to do just about anything he wants with her.

“What?” Rey whispers back, her hand caught up between them.

“You went away somewhere just now. You don’t have to do that. Not with me.”

She blinks at him and he blinks back at her. It’s so quiet in her room, all she can hear is the sound of their breathing and the shuffle of the sheets. Even the noises from outside are muted. She lifts her hand again, tentative like she’s afraid he might snap at her even though she knows he would never do that.

She runs her fingers along his nose. He closes his eyes, breathing softly at her touch. She pushes his hair out of his face and then traces the skin of his temple and jaw. Maybe one day she’ll get used to the way he looks, to the way it makes her feel having all of him to touch and have as hers. His eyes blink open, dark lashes fanning, and there is something new in his eyes now.

“I want to go for drives with you, again.” Rey doesn’t know why she says this, no more than she knows why she says about seventy percent of the things she says around him. It just comes out, not as a demand, but softer. Almost a plea, if she didn’t sound so wholly content.

Ben doesn’t quite smile, but there is warmth in his eyes. He curls even closer, burrowing the side of his face into the pillow to blink up at her. She’s almost reminded of a cat, stretching its long graceful limbs.

“What else?” Ben murmurs, holding her gaze.

She rubs her fingers over his clavicle, down the faint line dividing the pads of his chest and back up in a lopsided figure eight, to the rounded muscles of his upper shoulders.

“I want to listen to music with you. Go to the beach sometime, just the two of us.”

He rumbles in agreement, the sound lodged in his chest and vibrating against her wandering fingers. Rey smiles a little, thinking about all the things they used to do and all the other things they have yet to do together.

“I want you to teach me how to drive. Even if we use one of Leia’s cars. Wouldn’t dream of damaging The Falcon.” 

“You’ll learn with The Falcon, just like I did. Dents can be easily fixed.” His fingers tap against her spine before sweeping low on the small of her back and pressing her closer, so that her leg comes up over his thigh. 

They’re touching everywhere now; his cock is hard and insistent against her lower belly.

Sighing happily, Rey brings her finger to his brow, tracing the arch of his brow bone to the crest of his cheeks. Back to that beloved part of his face, right by his eyes, that are looking at her so lovingly, so sweetly.

“What else, Rey?” His hand rubs into her hip and then up her ribs.

“Maybe we can go on a trip sometime. We can go to New York, to all those nerdy museums you love.” She gets a pinch for that and she giggles, pretending to squirm away.

He yanks her closer with a playful growl. His smile is a slower build as he sweeps his hand down and squeezes her bum.

Rey gasps and buries her face in his hair, taking in his scent and moaning softly. His nose runs along her throat and she can hear him inhaling, breathing her in. Ben shifts her up, so her leg can wrap around his hip. Kissing the column of her throat, he makes his way to her shoulder and then to her ear. 

They shift together, his cock weeping precum against her inner thigh.

Perhaps this should gross her out, but she’s never found anything hotter. She’s no better really, she can feel how hot and wet she is for him already.

“What else?” he rasps in her ear. “Tell me, baby.”

“Everything,” she says into his hair, curling her fingers into those raven locks, her fingernails running along his scalp and making him groan softly in her throat. His cock brushes her wet folds and they sigh together, their hips moving in sleepy tandem. “I want everything with you.”

He reaches between them, gripping his cock and running it through the soaked lips of her pussy. Her hips buck when he reaches her clit and then he roams back, nestling at her entrance. He pulls his hand away, gripping her hips and pressing hungry kisses up her jaw until he reaches her lips.

“It’s yours, sweetheart. It’s always been yours.”

He grips her hips, pulling her into him at the same moment he thrusts up, and then he’s inside of her, thrusting slowly, and she's wet and lovely against him. They stare dreamily into each other’s eyes, her hands in his hair as they grind together. Beautiful friction, making them gasp and moan. Then they’re kissing, lips and tongues entwined and right before the end comes, she tells him she loves him, that she always has, the confession whispered and rushed into his hair. There, with the scent of rain and of him.

Ben’s gravelly moan is long, and drawn out when he follows her over the wave, where he murmurs to her  _ I love you too, always, always you _ into her skin.

*

Ben is laying on her bed with his feet planted on the floor when Rey emerges from the bathroom, dress and her hair in a ponytail. He’s fully dressed as well and his cell is pressed to his ear. She pauses when she sees that he made her bed while she cleaned up in the bathroom, the edges neatly tucked in the same way Aunt Leia does her own bed.

Rey smiles a little.

“Thanks Jannah… Yeah I owe you one. Well - yes, true, maybe it’s more like a hundred, but what’s a guy in his residency to do? … You’re a peach. Okay, thanks. Yep, bye.” 

Ben hangs up and bounds up from the bed to where Rey is hovering by the bathroom door, before picking her up and swinging her in a circle in his arms. She squeals and giggles, hanging on for dear life until he stops spinning and grins up at her.

“Guess what.” Ben looks far too pleased with himself, considering it’s not even nine in the morning.

Rey clucks her tongue and pretends to think it over. “Hmm…  _ The Rise of Skywalker _ was just a prank and they’re releasing the real final instalment this year?”

Her hands are in his hair again, because if she could get away with, they would  _ always _ be in his hair.

“No.” Ben shakes his head disbelievingly, his lips quirked into a crooked grin. He holds her in his arms like she weighs nothing more than a ragdoll, the speckled ceiling mere inches away from her head. She reaches up to run her fingers over it, humming under her breath as she takes her time to respond.

Really, it’s because she can practically feel him vibrating with excitement, which means whatever he knows is bound to please her as well.

“They’re remaking the  _ Star Wars _ prequels as a burlesque musical?” 

Rey drops her hand back to his shoulder and almost laughs at the exasperation on his face. He should have gone to school to become a professor, or something lofty like that. He has the long-suffering look down pat.

“Rey.”

“Greedo really did shoot first?”

“Rey.”

“The Mandalorian is a Jedi?”

“ _ Rey _ .”

“JJ Abrams regrets killing off Ky -  _ hey _ !”

Ben smirks at her smugly, rubbing the spot on her ass that he just pinched. “Are you done, brat?”

“If you’re lucky,” she mutters darkly, already plotting her revenge.

“I got the rest of the week off work.”

“Wait -  _ really _ ?” 

“I also might have called Luke and told him I’m taking you up to the family cottage for the rest of the week. Something along the lines that he gets the whole house to himself this week, so he can entertain all his lady friends.”

Rey pretends to gag and Ben snorts in a completely undignified manner before laughing at her. The day her father starts dating again will be the day that hell freezes over.

"Oh - but what about my job?" 

"I'm sure I can convince Mitaka that we had to abscond for personal reasons. Something about a great aunt dying, or something like that." Ben's eyes twinkle with mischief, just in the same way they used to whenever he stole sweets from Leia's purse when they were kids.

"Well, I'll be making a great impression already, taking a week off work after I've barely just started." But really, she does not really care in the end - not if it means they get to spend more time alone together.

"I was far more concerned with what Luke would say, to be honest." Ben is looking down at her neck now and then he lunges forward with no warning, licking a heady trail that makes Rey gasp.

“ _ Ben _ ... wait, what did dad say?” She pulls away, slightly breathless. 

Ben’s smirk is pure smugness, but she can’t even be upset at him for it.

“Well, he was too busy explaining the logistics behind the upcoming burlesque  _ Star Wars _ musical. You see, it’s a bit of a  _ Pretty Woman _ situation. Obi-Wan and Anakin are two street workers down on their luck and -  _ you brat _ ,” Ben growls out this last part when she pulls on his hair. Not hard enough to hurt him, but enough to get his eyes to darken in just the way she likes.

His hands squeeze her ass again, his grip tight and lingering. He leans in to lick another hot, wet trail up the side of her neck and her back arches, pushing her tits into his chest.

“What did my dad say?” she says, panting and attempting to keep them on topic before they end up fucking on her bed again.

“He said yes.”

Rey pulls back to stare down at Ben with a wide grin. His eyes are sparkling like onyx, his face pink and flushed. “Really?”

“Really.”

She squeals, earning her a halfhearted eye roll from Ben that is totally ruined by the big goofy smile plastered all over his face.

“When do we leave?” she says, showering his face with kisses.

Ben pushes out a hard breath, looking at her like he still can’t quite comprehend how she’s really in his arms, her legs wrapped around his waist and her lips painting kisses on his cheeks and forehead.

“How fast can you pack?”

*****

Not fast at all, as it turns out.

Well, packing  _ would _ have gone a lot quicker if Ben didn’t decide to prop her up on her dresser, yank off her pants and panties and slide his cock inside her. After another couple earth-shattering orgasms, Ben finishes all over her stomach and they are both left worn out.

At least, for now.

“We have to stop by my place to grab some things,” Ben explains a short while later as they load up the back of The Falcon with her small suitcase. He still has that cocky, little self-satisfied smirk on his face that Rey can’t even be mad at him over. She lost count of how many times he has made her cum today and it’s not even noon yet.

Mitaka was surprisingly understanding when she called to let him know she had to skip town for a death in the family. It helped that Ben got to gabbing with him on the phone and Rey had watched with fascination as he talked to this college friend she had not even known about until two weeks ago. They were practically  _ chummy _ on the phone and Ben did not notice her staring until a good five minutes into the call.

They pile into his car and soon enough, they’re taking off down the highway to Ben’s condo. As they bomb down the highway, with Ben going his usual speed of about thirty over the limit, Rey gets to thinking about he and Mitaka’s friendship and cannot resist her curiosity.

“So, how come I never got to hear about Mitaka?” she asks, kicking off her shoes and enjoying the cool AC.

“What do you mean?” Ben has his aviators on, and she keeps stealing adoring peeks at him when he isn’t looking.

“Well, you’ve literally never mentioned him to me before getting me the job at his studio. Not once.” She doesn’t sound accusing. She is more curious than anything. 

Mitaka is bubbly, vivacious, and outgoing – all qualities that Ben certainly lacks.

“Well, it’s not like I actively kept our friendship from you,” he replies with a frown.

“I know,” Rey says quickly. She reaches out to touch his leg and he jumps a little when she does this. That little smirk returns when she makes no move to pull away. “I’m just… surprised, I guess. You two could not be more opposite from each other.”

Ben does not respond right away. He leans over Rey to adjust the air vents and she rolls her eyes. He’s always fiddling with something in the car, even though he should keep his damned eyes on the road… and then, she breaks out into a slow, pleased smile. 

This is the first time she has been in this car in two years. With this happy realization in mind, she leans back in her seat, sighing contently as she stares at the passing scenery.

“I met him when I was still in the music program,” Ben finally says. 

Rey remembers Ben’s brief foray into the arts. Aunt Leia and Luke pressured him to switch though, and sure enough, there came along another MD in the long line of MDs in the Organa family. It's something she knows he is still secretly bitter over and she completely empathizes. She still has not told her father she got a job at an art studio. She can only imagine the look on his face when she does.

“Right, Mitaka told me about that.” Rey hides a smile, recalling all the colourful stories Mitaka shared about Ben’s time in university. She has enough ammunition for a lifetime now.

“Mitaka... helped me out. I went through a rough time towards the end of school and he was the only one who stuck by me. We might be different, but he’s a good friend. The best, really.”

Ben’s tone is strangely cryptic, and it takes her several seconds until she realizes why. He would have been finishing up his studies right around the time when she and Ben had their falling out. Rey glances at him, wondering if that is what is referring to, but she cannot bring herself to ask him. She’s not ready to face what happened between them. Not when they’ve been so happy together for the last few days.

This musing, though, leads her to another.

Did Ben feel the same way, even back then? All this time, was he pining the same way she was?

Rey pulls herself from her thoughts when she notices they’re leaving the highway and heading down Ben’s exit. She knows they will have to talk about all this soon, whether they want to maintain their perfect bubble or not. They can keep this all a secret for now – sure – but what about when things start getting serious? What if she wants to move in with him? To actually have a relationship with him?

Rey feels uneasy when they pull into Ben’s driveway, but his happy little grin just makes her want to forget about all that right now. She wants to have this, just for a little while, before things get complicated again. So, she puts her troubling thoughts behind her and goes into Ben’s place to help him pack. It is not long before he has her giggling in his arms, as he smacks wet kisses on her cheeks and she pretends to squirm away from him, only to burrow closer.

Yes, she can have this. Just for now. Just for a little while.

*

“Oh  _ shit _ .” 

Rey glances at Ben with raised eyebrows but he says nothing in reply. His movements are stilted when he hangs his sunglasses from the collar of his shirt. When the wind picks up over the redbuds and birches that Rey has spent many a summer and winter vacation growing up around, she breaks out into a chill. 

Together, she and Ben stand in front of his car, gawking at the cottage in disbelief. 

They have not bothered to take their bags from the car – they both saw it from out here on the road, still quite a ways down the driveway from the cottage, and then promptly stopped the car and got out. Ben draws a deep breath and Rey finds herself looking at him again, just so she does not have to look at the cottage anymore - or what is left of it. 

“I better call my mother.”

“Right, okay.” Ben walks away down the road to do just that and Rey returns her gaze to the cottage in muted horror. 

The cottage is nothing but a pile of charred ruins. 

The scent of rotting wood reaches her, even though they are still a good distance down the road. She has no idea what caused the fire – maybe a bad storm, it has been really hot and dry this year – but the cottage is gone. Burned to the ground. It has been in the family for decades, passed from generation to generation. She can recall countless summers spent here, countless winter breaks and holidays. In fact, the last time she was here was…

Rey takes a sharp breath.

Two years ago. That was the last time she was here. Luke and Leia had made them all go on one of their last family trips in recent memory, despite how awkward things had become between Ben and Rey at that point. That trip had only been less than a month after she had spied on Ben with that woman after he had overheard her in her bedroom getting herself off and he had fled from the house like the devil was chasing him. 

Only, on that particular trip to the cottage they had…

Rey closes her eyes, remembering it all; that night, the one she has tried so hard to forget. Nothing was the same after that night. It had all started with the Christmas ornament and ended with that night, here at this cottage.

The cottage is no more, but the memories remain, sharp like thorns.

“Rey?”

She opens her eyes and when she finds Ben staring at her with a frown, she throws him a guilty smile. She had not even heard him walk up to her, she had been so consumed with thoughts of the past, a conflicted concoction of arousal, shame, and dejection coursing through her, even though these memories are two years old now. 

Ben looks at her for a moment, brown eyes scrutinizing and assessing. He goes to speak, but Rey beats him to it, completely ignoring the fact that she is blushing.

“Is Aunt Leia okay? I know she was really attached to this place.”

“I didn’t catch her. Went right to voicemail.”

“Oh.”

Ben looks at Rey some more and she wishes he wouldn’t. She knows what is likely to follow; he will ask her what is wrong, knowing full well exactly what she is thinking about. The timing is not right to have that conversation, not with the cottage burned down and their parents to deal with. 

Ben’s lips fold together in thought and then he comes to that other expression she knows so well. That resolute, decided look.

“Come on.” He holds out his hand to her, but she does not take it right away.

“Aren’t we going to like – call the police or something? Or wait for Leia to answer her phone?” 

“I’ll call her tomorrow. The cottage is gone – what’s left isn’t going anywhere, and nothing will change between today and when I tell her. From the looks of it, it’s been this way for months.” He raises his eyebrows at her when she still makes no move to take his hand, and then his expression softens, his gazing flitting between her and the ruins behind her, as though he too is thinking about the past. About all those regrets laying at their feet. “I promised you a week away, and I intend to keep that promise, sweetheart.”

Rey’s breath catches and then she is reaching for his hand, like they are standing amidst a burning empire and he is the king of the ashes, offering her everything and nothing all in one. She cannot imagine a circumstance in which she would not take his hand, consequences be damned, and when he pulls her along behind him, back towards The Falcon, where she is soon cradled in the leather passenger seat, the engine roars to life and Ben takes her hand again and they are heading back down the road.

She does not know where this road will lead; all she knows is that she would not trade this for anything in the world.


	10. Hanging From Chandeliers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben unlocks the cabin and she notices that his hand is not quite steady.
> 
> She knows exactly how he feels. Her skin feels hot to the touch, like electricity is coursing through her veins. Like something in her wants to tear loose. He closes the door behind them with a click and she leaves her luggage by the front door, turning in a slow circle to examine the living room. The cabin is not very big, but then again, they do not need it to be; there is a kitchen that connects to the living room, a bathroom with a shower she can see from here.
> 
> Without a backwards glance, Rey goes to the bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a brief break to deal with real life problems (aren't they such a pain in the ass) I am back! 
> 
> So, full disclosure, I am super nervous about this chapter. I'll have some more notes at the end for those of you who read this previous draft, but I went in a slightly different direction with this. Really focused on upping the filth (because why not) but also because this is really about Rey's sexual journey and the complexity of her relationship with Ben. I felt to add other elements would distract from that. 
> 
> Next couple chaps will be pretty heavy on plot development as we wind down towards the end so soak in all that smutty goodness. 
> 
> Slight warning: Daddy Kink comes into full effect in this chapter. There is also a graphic oral sex scene in this chapter, so if that bothers you, I would recommend skipping after, "Now it is him begging her and while she’s never been more delighted to appease him than this moment, she thinks of one more thing that would make this all that much hotter. It is something she has wanted to try for a while now and she cannot think of a better time than now." It is all very consensual between the characters but some people are not big on oral so just a little forewarning. 
> 
> Enjoy this latest trashy chapter folks!

She is seventeen in this memory. Almost eighteen, just another two months and she’ll be that much closer to dreaded adulthood. Nothing has ever felt so remote to her. 

It is January. It is  _ cold _ and the heater in her dad’s car is barely doing anything to keep out that wintry bite. She is sitting in the backseat, staring out the car window at the passing scenery and doing her utmost to pretend that the person sitting next to her is not there. He is just a dark man-shape in her peripheral, one that continuously keeps making her blush and roil with a heady mixture of regret, longing, and dejection. If she keeps staring out the window, she can pretend for just a little while longer that he did not visit her house almost two months ago, that he did not wander upstairs looking for her, only to overhear…

_ God.  _

Her cheeks heat up at the memory and she shifts closer to the window. 

Ben, for his part, seems more than happy to follow her lead and act like she does not exist. He has not looked at her once. When he and his mother arrived at her house earlier to pack their things in Luke’s car, he had muttered a wooden hello to her that she had pretended not to hear. And now they are sandwiched together in the back seat in perfect awkwardness. 

She really cannot ask for a better way to spend her winter holidays. 

The car is a spell of silence until Luke finally caves and puts on the radio. Sitting in the passenger seat, Leia exchanges small glances with her twin brother every so often, in what Rey often thinks of as “twin speak”; where they do not say a word yet somehow know exactly what the other is thinking. 

Normally, she finds it creepy. Today, she is just annoyed. 

Over the last few weeks, Luke and Leia have each taken turns asking their respective children what has happened for them to suddenly stop talking. Sure, they’ve fought before - many times - but this is something different. Even though Luke and Leia cannot possibly know just how bad it is between them, they know  _ something  _ is wrong. 

In fact, she would go so far as to say that that the entire motive for this very sudden and impromptu trip is an ill-concealed attempt for their parents to get to the bottom of whatever is going on between them. To try and repair whatever gulf has grown between two cousins who up until the end of November, were pretty much inseparable. 

Even now, they are continuing their interrogation, even if it is silent, because she can  _ feel  _ them looking at the both of them every so often, as though waiting for the two of them to magically start speaking to one another again. 

She finds it all unbearably irritating. And she isn’t the only one. 

Ben stares out his window in his normal state of morose glumness, only now his jaw is clenching. He is sitting so close to his door that he is practically glued to it. They  _ could  _ have talked it over. They  _ could  _ broach the subject - privately, of course, when their parents aren’t around - but Ben has taken to avoiding her like the plague, which has only solidified her mortification and  _ fine, yes  _ her anger towards him. She still can’t get the image of him with that woman out of her head, but to make matters worse, he  _ heard _ her too and now…

She sighs quietly. Her breath fogs up the window and she uses a finger to draw a straight, horizontal line through the condensation. She remembers happier times, when all she had to do was draw a stupid picture to make Ben happy. 

Now, she has never felt more lost to sea. 

When she leans her head against the window to watch the line disappear, she wishes she could be back there again, where it was just her and Ben soaring above the sky. 

*

It is dusk when they arrive at the admissions booth for the Crystal Cove State Park.  _ The National _ plays, albeit quietly, like neither of them wants to disrupt their own thoughts. Rey can hear the ocean nearby and she smiles a little while Ben deals with the park rangers. They have cabins available and he quietly rents out one for the rest of the week. 

Then, they are rolling down the road, dust kicking up around the car as they slowly make their way to their assigned cabin. This all really just serves as a reminder of the very memory she had tried to bypass earlier. Of two years ago, when they had driven to the cottage together as a family. When there still  _ was  _ a cottage and how awful and awkward that silence had been in the backseat. How far away she had felt from Ben then, and how it  _ feels  _ different now. Sure. 

But will it stay that way?

“Thank you,” Rey says, suddenly shy though she has no idea why. Maybe it is because this feels more official than going to their family cottage. He is paying for them to stay somewhere for a week, in secret. Like a lover’s tryst. 

She blushes at that ridiculous notion and looks away before he can see.

“Of course,” Ben murmurs.

And that seems to be the end of their conversation.

They are more subdued than they were when they set out this morning. Tension has been steadily building over their car ride to the park, where Ben decided they would go in lieu of the cottage. That tension is taut now, like an elastic band stretched to capacity. She can feel it from Ben too, can see the tight line of his jaw and the way his knuckles are white on the steering wheel. 

The sky has turned an ominous black, all stormy clouds and threatening petrichor. The air smells like pennies and Rey thinks of animals, of beasts in the night, heady with carnal delight. She feels a little like that.

They get to the cabin with the hush of dusk. It’s secluded in thick greenery, and the ocean is close by, just over a large sand dune not thirty feet away from the cabin’s front door. Ben turns off the car and they sit together, peering up the cabin. It is made entirely of wood, more of a log cabin than anything, and has a pretty porchlight that gives Rey hope that there might be hot water and electricity.

Even if there isn’t, she is happy just to be here at all.

Without a word, they climb out of The Falcon and grab their luggage. Fat raindrops splatter on Rey’s forehead and cheeks, and soon they are running to the cabin as a sudden downpour soaks them to the bone. Normally, she would laugh at such a thing, but the corkscrew in her lower stomach doesn’t really make her feel like laughing. Her shirt clings to her skin, jarringly cold and leaving her nipples raw and hard. Her breathing is staggered, both from the shock of the rain, and from the feeling deep within her.

Ben unlocks the cabin and she notices that his hand is not quite steady.

She knows exactly how he feels. Her skin feels hot to the touch, like electricity is coursing through her veins. Like something in her wants to tear loose. He closes the door behind them with a click and she leaves her luggage by the front door, turning in a slow circle to examine the living room. The cabin is not very big, but then again, they do not need it to be; there is a kitchen that connects to the living room, a bathroom with a shower she can see from here.

Without a backwards glance, Rey goes to the bedroom.

She knows he is following her. She can practically taste his want in the air because it is the same as her want. Just as desperate and needy and hot as hers. 

The bed is massive and surprisingly comes with clean sheets and linens. There are wood carvings along the walls that Rey does not bother to look at. With trembling hands, she reaches for the hem of her shirt and takes it off, tossing it on the floor where it lands wetly against the creaking wood. She reaches for the button of her shorts next, but then a large pair of arms wrap around her from behind, gently pushing her hands away and undoing her button for her. She can feel his chest against her back, the wet fabric making her shiver. He gets the button undone and then leans down behind her to slowly peel off her shorts.

Ben kisses the notches of her spine on the way down, his lips dry in contrast with the wetness still clinging to her skin. He brushes his nose against the small of her back, and he is gentle, but firm, when he pushes her forward, until the tops of her thighs are pressed against the footboard of the bed. Before she can climb on, as she thinks he wants her to, he grasps her thighs, stilling her.

Rey hears him take off his own shirt behind her, but before she can turn around, he kneels directly behind her, his hands wrapped firmly around her legs, keeping her pinned right where he wants her. She is just in her panties and bra, her skin pebbling with goosebumps. She bites her lower lip, waiting to see what he will do to her, and jumps when he presses a wet kiss right below the hem of her panties, on the curve of her ass. 

At the same time, thunder rumbles outside, shaking the small wooden cabin.

Rey moans, the sound needy even to her ears. Everything in her is ratcheting up, and she knows without checking that she is already drenched. Ben makes a soft sound behind her, leaning away and leaving her breathless and waiting. 

Then, he suddenly nips her left cheek, his teeth snagging on her panties and dragging them down a little.

Neither of them has spoken a word since they entered the cabin and that strange tension builds, barreling quickly towards a crescendo that Rey is not sure either of them will survive. Her blood sings with it, as Ben licks a trail over the dimples of her lower back and then his hand slides up one thigh, up and under the one side of her panties. He twists them into a fist and with one rough movement, rips them clean off of her.

She gasps with shock, but that sound soon turns into a whimper when he forcefully spreads her cheeks and licks her pussy. Rey almost falls forward onto the bed, but then his other hand is there to grip her bare waist, keeping her upright, as he arches his back and leans in to suck on her clit. 

A part of her wishes she could watch him, but it is dark in their room anyway. Neither of them bothered to turn the lights on and when lightning flashes through the window and Ben laps at her dripping cunt with a guttural groan, she feels like Persephone, from the myths she read about in school. He is her Hades, come to whisk her away to the underworld.

Soon, he is curling a finger – and then two – inside her, pumping his digits and sucking bruises into the skin of her ass and thighs. She bucks back into him on instinct. 

“Oh,” she moans, mindless and completely focused on the winding pleasure in her lower stomach. “Oh, Ben.”

He takes a ragged breath against her heated flesh and then pulls his fingers from her entirely. Rey can hear smacking sounds behind her, can hear him cleaning her from his fingers, and when she climbs on the bed and turns over to finally look at him, her breath stutters.

Ben gets up from his kneeling position, with a smooth and predatory edge to his movements that make her squirm on the bed. She unhooks her bra and slides it off with shaky fingers, her eyes riveted as he reaches for his belt buckle and slowly, intentionally, pulls it open. He slides his pants and boxer briefs down, and then he is a naked shadow at the end of the bed, his form large and imposing as ever as he takes himself in hand and strokes his cock, slowly, almost methodically.

Rey moans as she watches him, getting even wetter at the sight. She could get off to this just that, she knows all too well. Watching him touch himself, watching him make himself cum…

It’s a flicker, like lightning in the window or the flash of a camera in one’s peripheral. 

She sees him as he was on that night two years ago. In the cabin, after Leia and Luke had left, after that awful fight and then it had just been the two of them, lying in her bed. She can see it perfectly; how he had looked, when he worked himself so  _ hard,  _ so  _ fucking hard,  _ and how she had… 

But she does not want to think about this tonight. Not with him here, so close to her, and staring down at her with something close to worship in his eyes. 

Without warning, Ben leans forward and grabs her foot, dragging her towards the end of the bed. Towards him. Her breasts jiggle fetchingly as he yanks her to him and he leans down then, grasping her hair tightly in his fist and slanting his mouth over hers. They kiss hotly, making broken sounds in each other’s mouths as their tongues fight for dominance. 

Tonight, she is more than happy to cede control to him. She would even go so far to say that she needs it.

Ben pulls away, taking her bottom lip between his teeth and tugging, before drawing back up to his full, imposing height. His hands slide away from her, but not before he grips her breast and gives a delicious squeeze. She makes a soft keening sound, wanting more, always more and more. Whatever he will give her. She can just make out his eyes in the dark; they’re glittering, pretty things and as rain pounds down on the roof, she shifts under his weighty gaze, her knees bent as she rests back on her elbows, so her tits are pointed out, inviting.

He draws a deep, stuttering breath and then he reaches for her legs, turning her body over effortlessly, so she is on her hands and knees at the edge of the bed, her legs spread to present her soaking pussy to the perfect angle for his cock. He runs a hand over her bottom, soft and barely-there, before he draws his hand away and brings it down in a light smack.

Rey gasps with surprise, her spine-tingling and her ass cheek flaring with brief pleasure-pain.

Ben stills behind her, waiting.

Suddenly, she understands. With thoughts of the past lingering in the air between them, she thinks she knows exactly what this is. Rey bites her lips and then rocks back a little on her hands and knees, wiggling her ass and making a soft, needy sound. Ben groans, leaning down to kiss the cheek he just smacked before he draws back and smacks her ass again, a little harder than the first time. And god, it’s just what she needs right now. What they both need, with the might of the storm around them and this foreign cabin awash in darkness.

They can hide away their misdeeds here, in this dirty darkness.

“I…” Rey keens, but then he interrupts her with another smack, this time to the other cheek. The sound is loud in their room and she flinches away, only to push her ass out for more.

“Fuck,” Ben rasps, darkly. He grasps one cheek in a punishing grip, squeezing and caressing. 

She’s unbearably wet. Unbearably  _ empty _ . But she’s going to be good for him. She’s going to wait because d -  _ Ben  _ always gives her what she needs. 

Blushing at her own slipup, even though it was just in her head, she rocks back on her hands and knees, relishing the dark sound he makes as he runs a finger from her clit, all the way up the seam of her to the small of her back. As he passes that other hole, she literally has to bite her lips to keep from telling him that tonight he can have what he wants - even that hole, if he so desires. Because it just so happens that she desires it too. 

But still, she waits and when he spanks her again, she moans brokenly into her forearm. 

Suddenly, she feels the skin of his thighs and hips slide against her backside. Before she can look over her shoulder at him, Ben grasps her waist and in one brutal thrust, she is full of him.

“ _ Uhn! _ ” Rey cries out hoarsely. Her bottom stings from his spanking, only now it’s his hips slapping into her heated skin, just as ruthless, just as punishing as his hand had been. 

The sound his cock makes upon brutal reentry is slick and echoes throughout the quiet bedroom. A moist slap of skin. Lightning pitches the room in brief relief and Ben  _ moans _ , his hands going around her waist in a tight grip. Her pussy is stretched out around his length, just on the side of discomfort. He seems to take a second to look down at where they are connected, his fingers like iron on her skin. 

And then he begins to move. 

The first few thrusts are gentle and slow, so that he is sliding in and out of her tiny pussy in wet squelches, his cock gliding into that place inside only he can reach. He works through the tight rings of her muscle, pumping inside her in a lingering and staggered rhythm that knocks her breath out.

“ _ Fuck _ Rey,” Ben groans, his hands digging into her waist so hard, she knows there will be bruises. His next thrust is even slower, his cock brushing against her womb and making her cry out into the bedspread. “ _ Fuck _ , baby. I dream about this, about being inside you. I could fuck you for days… but you already knew that, don’t you?”

When Ben gives her a harder thrust, just a taste really of the passion and force that she knows he is capable of, she makes a sound she knows she would not be able to replicate, not even with a gun to her head. He uses one hand to slide up her spine and then back down again, before he draws his hand back and gives her another spank to her ass, rougher than the last. She gasps, a feeling of electricity travelling to all points in her body, and then she pushes back into him, until they find a dirty rhythm together, pulsing and ebbing and flowing back together like the tide to shore. 

“I could barely get us here, you know.” His voice is little more than a rasp now, his hips slapping into her behind as he picks up the pace. “ _ Mmmmmf _ … I wanted to pull over so many times… Fuck sweetheart, you’re so fucking  _ tight _ … I wanted to bend you over the hood of my car. Rip those fucking shorts off and make you swallow my cum. Would you like that? Would you like swallowing my cum, baby?”

Rey barely moans out an affirmation before he  _ drives _ into her, her pussy  _ clenching  _ though she’s not sure if it’s from the roughness of his voice, or the way he is already so close to bringing her over the edge. 

Her nipples brush against the sheets, her stomach taut and her hands crooked as the slap of skin fills her ears. Her hands are threatening to give out on her, but then Ben is right there behind her, folding himself over her so that her ass is pressed in a perfect curve against his hips. He fucks her hard and deep, groaning lowly in his throat. Her name is a reverent gasp, leaving his lips over and over again like a sacrilegious prayer. She grips his cock like a glove within her, all wet and hot and twitching as her orgasm rushes towards her.

But Rey needs something else first.

Ben put himself out there to her tonight, revealing more than she thought he ever would, and now it is time for her to return the favour. 

“Ben,” she moans brokenly, arching her back to look over her shoulder at him. Her ass is pressed against him more this way and she feels his hips stutter at the feeling. 

And he sounds fucking  _ wrecked _ when their eyes lock. One of his hands leaves her hips, to grasp her hair so she can’t turn away. So, their eyes stay locked as he fucks into her.

“I’ve got you, baby.” He snaps his hips, his cock gliding through her slickness in smooth repetition. She moans brokenly and he makes a harsh sound, grounding out the word “fuck” between his clenched teeth. " _ That's _ it, my baby girl. Love the little noises you make. Keep being good for me, sweetheart."

Something in Rey breaks open; a dam that only remains on its last struts as it is. Ben stares down at her, not once lessening his hectic pace. His lips part and his eyes darken further, and she knows that he likes the tears and the pleading in her eyes. Oh yes, she knows exactly what her Ben needs. 

But there is nothing practised in what she says next. It is only pure desire, only years’ worth of unanswered need, making her lips tremble and her eyes shine with tears. 

“Tell me... Tell me I’m a good girl,” Rey says –  _ begs _ – in a tortured whisper.

Ben gasps hard, his thrusts faltering. His chest, red with exertion and shining with sweat, rises with a shaky breath and then he leans down to grasp her around the middle, bringing her up and flush against his chest, her back arched and her ass pressed firmly against his hips, so he can get his length entirely inside her, where he is meant to be.

“Say that again,” Ben demands in a roughened snarl, his breath hot in her ear as he resumes fucking her at a pace that makes her whole body quake, just on the threshold of release.

Rey moans at the command, at how much she needs to hear it.

“T-tell me I’m a good girl.  _ Please _ , Ben,” she begs hoarsely, needy little tears streaming down her face with her sweat.

He cups her breast with one hand and grips her hip hard enough to bruise with the other. He pinches her nipple, and gives her another rough thrust when she keens. 

“Is that what you want, Rey?” he snaps in her ear and then his hand slides down sweat-slicked skin, until he reaches her cunt. Just above where his throbbing length is steadily pounding into her, he presses a finger against her clit and rubs in hectic circles. She moans loudly, and he hisses in response, his cock thrusting up against that sweet spot. “You want me to tell you how  _ good _ you are, sweetheart? Hm? Taking my cock so well in this tight little pussy.”

Ben bites behind her ear, moaning deep in his chest at her desperate mewling. He sucks her skin into his mouth, his fingers pinching her nipple while he swipes her clit harder. His voice drops even lower until it is little more than a growl. 

"Want me to tell you how  _ obedient _ you are for taking all my cum? How  _ good _ you're going to be for me when you let me fill and fuck every hole I want because you're  _ mine,  _ baby girl."

Rey clenches hard on his cock when he says this, earning her a sucking lovebite to the crook of her neck. 

"Yes d-" she breaks off at the last second, not quite able to cross that threshold just yet. 

Behind her, Ben’s breath catches. 

“Yes what?” he says darkly into her ear, and there is a knowingness in his voice, now. 

Rey would have blushed if she could, but she is far too focused on the hard cock driving into her aching core for such things. 

"B-Ben,” she whimpers. He breathes harshly against her skin, his hips arching and coiling like a relentless tide, smooth muscles tightening in his back and his arms cradling her against him. “P-please-" he licks her sweat, groans and keeps pumping, "tell me-" she begins to shake in his arms, as his large finger works her pink little clit harder, "p-please tell me I'm a good girl."

Ben breaks away from her skin, his lips pressing to her ear as he finally gives her exactly what she needs.

“Oh Rey, you’re  _ such _ a good girl.” Just before she comes with his fingers swiping relentlessly against her clit, his darkly deep voice is what tips her over the edge, “You’re  _ my _ good girl. Come for me baby, come all over my cock.”

Rey’s hips buck back into him, her pussy spasming with an orgasm like none before, rippling through her lower abdomen. Her head is thrown back in ecstasy and the words tumble out with no hesitation at all. 

“ _ Yes daddy _ !  _ Mmmmmf yes, I’m cumming _ !” 

Rey barely hears the broken and shocked sounds that Ben is making. All she can focus on is how beautifully freeing this moment is, and how her orgasm goes on much longer than ever before. Wet slickness gushes down his length, running down both of their legs with the quake of her aftershocks.

Ben’s arm locks around her, so she cannot melt into a puddle on the bed, and then he is  _ pounding _ into her, groaning helplessly as he approaches his own end. His hips hardly leave her ass before they return, and inside she is warmth, she is soaking, she is stuttering muscles, and she is  _ free.  _

“Fuck Rey. Call me that again. Please sweetheart?” 

Now it is  _ him _ begging  _ her _ and while she’s never been more delighted to appease him than this moment, she thinks of one more thing that would make this all that much  _ hotter _ . It is something she has wanted to try for a while now and she cannot think of a better time than now. 

“Please,” Rey keens in his arms, using her best simpering voice as her aftershocks ripple across his pumping length. She blushes as she says the words, but a part of her feels more liberated than ever. Finally, she can say this when she has been wanting it for so long. “I I w-want to swallow it, daddy. I need it so badly.”

The sound Ben makes then - she did not think him capable of it such a sound and she has heard and seen this man do many things because of her. He sounds broken, at the precipice of absolute need, and she twists her neck so she can bat her eyes up at him. His eyes are glassy and she knows he is almost there; there is a dark hunger there too, a renewed need only she can fill. 

But then she sees a hesitance in him as well, a last-ditch effort to let her take it back. 

Flushed and pink from her orgasm, and desperate for him to believe her, Rey whimpers at him, “Please, Ben? I want to.” And she absolutely means it. 

He gives her three hard thrusts and then he roughly pulls out of her, easily turning her body over so she is lying on her back on the bed. Her hair is damp with sweat and tangled about her head, but Ben doesn’t seem to care. He straddles her chest with each of his massively muscled thighs pinning her in place, his eyes gleaming with desire, lust and a touch of adoration. 

He brings his throbbing cock, glistening from her juices, right before her face. His other hand tangles in her hair and gently lifts her head up a little so that his cock is less than an inch from her mouth. He grips his length hard, his knuckles white, and she moans helplessly as she watches him work his hand up and down at a brutal pace, the head of his cock red and angry looking. She has only seen him do this once before but it is nothing to what she is seeing and experiencing now. 

Now, everything is so much more intense. But she needs more. She needs him everywhere and inside and all over. 

“Open your mouth, baby. That’s it, just like that,” Ben growls savagely as she hurries to comply. 

His breath is leaving him in whooping gasps and she sees his cock  _ twitch  _ in his grasp as he brings his hand up to his glans and uses her cum to jerk himself towards completion. She’s never seen anything more beautiful than Ben like this - and it’s all for her. She can’t help but moan. 

His teeth wink out to bite at his plush bottom lip. 

“Fuck, you’re so _ good _ for me, aren’t you Rey?” 

His hips start bucking in time with his rough jerking off, so that he is effectively fucking his hand. Each buck of his hips brings him closer to her mouth and suddenly, she just wants him there - inside her mouth, on her tongue, down her throat. She has never wanted anything more than that. She is just contemplating how she will work up the nerve to do it when Ben starts speaking again. 

“ _ F-fuck _ . My beautiful girl, waiting for my cum. And you’re going to swallow all of it, aren’t you?” 

Rey moans her agreement, completely entranced with the way in which he is slowly falling apart above her. She tries to remember everything Finn and Rose have ever told her about this experience; that the taste will likely be weird, to make sure to cover her teeth with her lips, that she doesn’t have to swallow it if she doesn’t want to, but all rational thought is flying out the window. She just wants to go for it, really, and he is  _ sososo  _ close, she can practically taste it. 

And then, her daring has her leaning up on her elbows all on her own before he can stop her. 

Rey ducks her head forward to wrap her lips around the tip of him, and though she is not entirely sure what to do, she knows enough to use her tongue to stroke the underside, right along the tapered head of his cock. 

Ben is halfway through a thrust when she does this, so he inadvertently pumps his cock further into her awaiting mouth. He releases a strangled moan of surprise and pleasure, and the hand in her hair tightens, almost to the point of pain. Yet somehow that just makes everything  _ hotter _ ,  _ headier _ . 

And Rey knows without a doubt in her mind that she needs more. She needs him  _ deeper _ . 

Doing her best not to gag, she leans up a little bit more, until the fat head of his cock is resting on the back of her tongue. 

"Oh  _ fuck _ ," Ben groans on a gasp, his breath catching when she latches on to his cock. He has stopped jerking himself off, his chest rising and falling from his harsh panting as he simply  _ stares  _ down at her like he has never seen her before properly. His breath leaves in a stuttered groan and then his fingers are stroking her face lovingly as he whispers “Are you sure, Rey?”

She doesn’t answer him with words. Instead, she shows him. 

Rey somehow knows to create a seal with her lips so his thick length can't escape her mouth and the sensation of her mouth’s suction makes Ben buck his hips again, almost like a reflex. He hisses a breath when she swirls her tongue experimentally around the head of his cock. 

He has not told her to stop, so she keeps going, blushing and embarrassed, but incredibly turned on as well. She wants this to last a little longer and from the way Ben is looking at her, she can tell he does too. So, she licks and sucks, bobbing her head and licking a hot line from the tip of his cock, down the shaft, and giving little kitten licks to his balls. She has no idea what she's doing, but judging from the sounds Ben makes, he  _ loves  _ it.

His hand tightens in her hair all of a sudden and she immediately stops. She is panting just as harshly as he is and if she could reach, she would be touching herself right now. His cock is painfully hard now, and even though he is still grasping it, she can see how curved it is. How it  _ twitches  _ under her hungry gaze. 

“I want to try something,” Ben rasps and the hand clenching her hair loosens, until his fingers stroke the side of her face with such affection, Rey does not know what to do with herself. “Can we try something, baby?”

“Yes,” she replies right away, utterly enraptured with the darkness of his gaze. 

“Yes what?” he breathes at her, and almost as though he does not know what he is doing, his hips thrust forward a little, even though he’s not in her mouth anymore. 

“Yes daddy.”  _ Fuck _ , she’s so wet. 

“Good girl. I want you to open your mouth and stay very still for me.”

“But,” Rey says, haltingly. His gaze darkens a little, yet she perseveres, “but I want to keep going. I want to keep…”

“You want to keep sucking on my cock, sweetheart?” She nods and his jaw shifts like this pleases him. “Oh, you will,” he reassures her with that crooked little grin that makes her want to  _ beg  _ him. “You will, baby. But not yet. Good girls do what they’re told.”

Ben waits again, watching her face for hesitation or uncertainty but he will not find any there. She wants this as badly as he does, if not more. 

“Yes, daddy.”

He takes a ragged breath and then his face rearranges from one of need, to a look Rey has dreamt and craved for years now. 

“Lay back. Yes, like that. Now, open your mouth. _ Right now _ , Rey.” 

The command is sharp and stern, and Rey  _ squirms  _ on the bedspread with a soft needy sound. She wants him to talk to her like that again. She wants him to tell her exactly what to do. She wants to be  _ so  _ good for him. And that is exactly what she does. 

He moves his hips until the head of his cock is resting on her tongue. His breathing is not quite steady, but that’s okay. She feels that any second, she might burst apart and become so many air particles. 

“Now… I’m going to fuck this sweet little mouth and you’re going to take it. Isn’t that right?”

“ _ Mmmmmmuh, _ ” Rey moans around the head of his cock and he hisses a sharp breath. 

“Tell me if it’s too much,” Ben whispers, reverting back to himself for a second and when she nods, that sternness returns to his features once more. 

His thighs shift so that he is straddling her upper chest and then he leans down onto the bed with one hand holding himself up so that he is not crushing her, while his other hand remains wrapped around his cock. His lower abs and pelvis are right above her eye-line now, all taut and slicked with sweat. His cock is resting just inside her mouth and she can taste herself on him. Strangely, she rather enjoys the taste of herself on him. She can hear the breath he takes in his lungs, his chest hovering over the bed somewhere above her. 

Then he  _ slowly, torturously  _ tilts his hips until his cock glides over her tongue and gently bumps the back of her throat. 

Rey gags immediately and though the sensation is not painful or unpleasant, it is overwhelming.  _ He  _ is overwhelming. He has always felt so large inside of her, but now she is experiencing him in a completely different way. 

From above her, she can hear the rough rasp of his voice, hard but somehow still reassuring. 

“Tilt your head back, baby. Relax your throat-” he grinds a little into her mouth when she does as commanded and suddenly it’s easier to take him this way. “ _ Yes, _ ” he hisses, and then he withdraws, only to slowly thrust back into her mouth in a wet slide of spit, “ _ Yes, _ just like that, my good girl _. _ ”

Soon, he is thrusting gently into her mouth, pushing a little deeper with each pass, and she stays absolutely still and takes it like the good girl she is. His hand moves away from his cock as he presses into her again, the head of his cock going deep down her throat. His fingers curl into her hair instead and  _ pin  _ her to the bed, forcing her to take the long, thick girth of him until her lips stretch around him. She feel the tension in his body, can feel the way he strains with the effort of not just  _ fucking  _ her face the way he would her pussy. 

Each thrust is staggered. Gentle in comparison with how he usually is with her. And she finds herself hoping he will snap eventually, as she is usually capable of making him do. She wants him to be forceful, rough. She wants him buried within her. 

Ben withdraws his cock until just the tip is in her mouth. Spit clings to his length in fine lines, only for him to fuck into her mouth again, until his pelvis is pressed against her nose. 

“ _ Fuck _ , that’s good.” Ben’s voice is rough and scratchy with pleasure. She moans around his length, her tongue gliding against the smooth skin of his erection when he presses back in. “Your mouth is so warm and wet, baby. I could do this all day, use this hot,  _ wet  _ little mouth. Fill you up with my cum, make you swallow every drop. And you’ll take it because you’re  _ mine. _ ”

Rey moans again and he rewards her with a harder thrust, making her gag. But she doesn’t mind the gagging so much anymore. This is unbearably hot, him using her mouth this way. She makes small, suckling sounds, her throat giving way with moist little squelches as he burrows his cock deeper and deeper down her throat. 

Suddenly, he pushes off the bed, his cock sliding from her mouth, until it’s just the tip resting against her tongue. He straddles her once more, and as she peers up the carved lines of his pelvis and stomach, past the hard pads of his chest and up to those dark eyes she loves so much, she can see a thrill of dark lust in Ben’s eyes. 

"Close your lips around me,” he commands in an unsteady rasp. 

Rey seals her mouth around him, making soft little mewls. Almost in desperation, she laps on the head of his cock, where precum steadily drips out, desperate to be good for him. To make him cum. 

“Suck," Ben commands. He groans loudly when she complies, desperately bucking his hips from the tight suction of her mouth. His fingers pull at her hair until her head lifts off the bed on every other stroke and she can see from the tension of his muscles how hard he is fighting not to plow into her mouth. " _ Fuck!  _ That’s.... so  _ good _ , baby girl. So  _ good _ for daddy. Keep sucking on me, sweetheart. Keep sucking on daddy’s cock just like that. You're doing so good."

Rey moans and eagerly does as commanded. 

His eyes are dark and hooded with pleasure as she takes him deeper in her mouth, as deep as she can go. She starts taking long, slurping pulls on his throbbing cock like it's the most delicious thing she has ever put in her mouth. Drools drips from the corners of her mouth, which only seems to egg him on more. 

Ben moans, taking deep ragged breaths as he thrusts his hips in a slow, tightly restrained rhythm, so that he presses his cock further into her mouth, almost like he cannot help himself, like he  _ needs  _ to move, to be deeper inside her. At the same time, he fists her hair, forcing her to bob her head up and down, her eyes watering as she bats her eyelashes at him. She's wet and incredibly turned on, and she can't help but moan at the way he uses her mouth. 

"That’s it," Ben murmurs to her encouragingly. He hisses in a breath, his body trembling as he tries to hold back from cumming. "Fuck yes.  _ That's _ my good little girl. You're taking me so good, baby. Letting me fuck this sweet little mouth. Keep sucking my cock, baby. Just like that.”

Rey suctions her mouth even harder, her tongue moving in wet, urgent strokes until he is almost entirely buried in her mouth. When she starts tugging on his balls at the same time that she bobs her head in fast little jerks, Ben groans loudly and his cock throbs in her mouth. 

This, however, is the only warning she gets when he finally - and deliciously - breaks. 

Ben abruptly pushes her down so that she cannot bob her head anymore and then he  _ pins  _ her head to the bed, his hands buried in her hair and chest rising and falling rapidly. He starts thrusting into her mouth, his rhythm going faster, harder, more lingering than before. His cock is glistening with her spit, with her lips stretched around his girth and her head tilted back to prevent gagging. 

A long, loud groan tears itself up through his chest and into the heated air, and all Rey can do is moan in return. She needs him like this, right here, all over her. She needs it so badly. 

“ _ Take it. Just like that, baby girl. Just - like - that _ ,” Ben growls in a deep timber that makes Rey’s pussy leak onto the bedspread. 

He stares down at her with that awed tinge to his expression, and while he is consumed with finishing, she can still sense his awareness of her. That he might be using her mouth to get off, but he still knows she is  _ there _ , that she is  _ present.  _ That it is not so much as using, as attempting to commune with her body in all the ways she knows he needs from her. 

He moans again and rasps out to her, “Fuck Rey. I love you so much.”

She would have replied in kind, but her mouth is far too preoccupied at the moment. His grip does not loosen from her hair, his cock knocking off the back of her throat as his rhythm loses fluidity. 

That is when she feels his cock throb again. 

On the next thrust, Ben tips his head back and  _ roars _ his orgasm, making her breath catch from the sound. Warm, saltiness gushes into her mouth, and she swallows it all down under his dark eyes, heedless of the strange taste. It’s not nearly as bad as Rose said it was. Salty and a little strange. But not bad at all. 

“ _ Yes… Fuck!  _ Take daddy’s cum, my good, good girl _. Mmmmmm-fuck!  _ Don’t stop, sweetheart. Just like that _...” _

Ben’s grip tightens in her hair as he begins fucking into her mouth in earnest, his hips bucking reflexively through his orgasm as he closes his eyes and drops his head back with a animalistic growl tearing from his lips. He draws her head up off the bed with a sound of sheer desperation, until her lips are nearly flushed with his pelvis and his cock is knocking against the back of her throat as he fills her with his cum. His moans are long and drawn out, and there they burn into her memory, to be turned over and replayed at her leisure. 

Then, suddenly, Ben drops them both down to the bed again. He uses one hand to prop himself up, his twitching and convulsing body hovering right above her face. He cups her head right at the nape of her neck in a tight, firm grip and keeps thrusting, his pelvis battering against her nose with every pump. He just keeps  _ coming  _ and  _ coming,  _ and Rey - she  _ moans  _ all around him, relishing in his pleasure like it is her own. The bed springs squeak, Rey mewls and gags and wetly sucks, and Ben’s muscles ripple in his ass and lower back as he empties his spend down her throat in long, lingering thrusts, using her mouth and throat to milk the spend from his cock. 

Drool and cum seep out of the corners of her mouth, and her moist gagging and suckling, along with his steadily pounding hips, create a slick sonata in their quiet bedroom. His cock bumps the back of her throat one final time until he makes a broken sound and pulls away. 

And then he just  _ collapses  _ on his stomach next to her, making the most sated male sound she’s ever heard. 

Rey takes a deep breath, absently wiping at her mouth and shifting her jaw back and forth from the slight ache there. But the discomfort is worth it. The taste was not bad at all and though he was rough, it was nothing she could not gladly take. 

Already, she wants to try that again. 

Ben weakly lifts his arm with a huff of air, grasping her and dragging her to his side. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and pushes her face into his shoulder. 

“Love you too,” Rey whispers into the warmth of his skin. 

Ben makes a sound that is not remotely intelligible. Just a rumble in his chest that is instinctively satisfied while also, quite simply,  _ awed. _

He falls asleep soon after. She curls around him, tucking his face under her chin and happily playing with the curls resting on the nape of his neck. She feels like flying right now. Or running around the room and laughing and screaming with giddiness. 

Because she just made Ben come. In her  _ mouth _ . 

Rey suppresses helpless giggles into Ben’s hair, struggling not to make a sound so she does not wake him. Rose and Finn always describe oral sex - or at least the end result - as disgusting, as just a chore to be done with to get the end. But Rey is not remotely disgusted. She is  _ elated _ . How many times has Ben gone down on her? How many times has he made her come? Finally, she can say the same. The taste, smell, or just any of it really does not bother her at all. 

She might even go so far as to say that she  _ loves  _ it. 

As Ben begins to softly snore into her collarbone, Rey listens to the rain outside and tries to remember why exactly she was so worried earlier today. They’re here, now, in this cabin together, so ridiculously in love that Finn and the others would likely make fun of her and -

Rey stops breathing. 

It comes back to her. She tries, she really does, to squash that worming anxiety. That seed of doubt. But once it returns, there is nothing she can do to stop it. 

_...it has to stay a secret. You can’t tell your friends, or anyone else. I just want to make sure you understand what this means. _

At the time, she had understood very well what that meant. At least, she thought she had. 

And now… 

Ben murmurs in his sleep and then his arms tighten around her, as though he senses the troubled turn of her thoughts. Rey presses a kiss to his temple and closes her eyes, but it is a very long time before she falls asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone. 
> 
> So, originally, I had hinted at the end of this chapter that Rey had missed her birth control and that she might be pregnant. I hope I am not disappointing anyone too badly by taking that plot line away. It did not feel right to me when I was going over that draft of the story. As I said in the chap notes above, I really just want to focus on their relationship, the relationship they have to their parents, and how they will resolve the main storyline at the end. Adding a pregnancy felt a little cheap to me, only because that would be an easy out. I would rather have some emotional resolution there and not have their potential future tied to an obligation, but rather because that is what they choose. 
> 
> Hope that makes sense <3


	11. I Like It All That Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How long will it take before that small splinter of doubt - and yes, fine, resentment - grows into something so large that neither of them can contain it anymore? All she knows is how she feels when they are together - even in small moments like this when they are not even speaking to each other, but simply and perfectly comfortable in each other’s company. She knows that she loves him and that he loves her, and that nothing has ever felt more right than this - all their lovely, filthy, and heated moments, and in these quiet, regular and pedestrian moments as well. 
> 
> But will contentment be enough? Will she always be satisfied with this being just their dirty little secret?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The angst is strong with this one. 
> 
> This chapter - and the next - will have a different set-up, but the memories are still clearly marked. We have some plot to get through here, so less sexy times, but hopefully, it will all be worth it! I really look at this chapter and the next as a two-parter of each other, so they might be a little shorter than normal. 
> 
> Next chap will be Ben's POV :D
> 
> Hope ya'll enjoy this latest chap!!!! <3

Rey wakes up to the sound of rain against the windows, light and pattering like wind shaken leaves. The bedroom is cast in shadow, all monochrome grey and light blue. 

She is disoriented. Still one foot in sleep’s cavernous doorway and one precariously placed foot in the land of the wakeful. The scent of cedar is fragrant and the wood panelling on the walls unfamiliar. She wonders for a brief time if she is still dreaming; waking up in a bed that is not hers, back stiff and mind hazy with oversleep. A warm huff of air tickles her shoulder and she blearily turns her head to find a familiar mop of black hair. 

Ben’s face is pressed into her neck, his arm thrown haphazardly over her midriff, trapping her against his lulling warmth. 

Rey is still half-convinced this a vivid dream. 

For some reason, all she can think of is the Organa family cottage. All that oak and cedar, all those cobalt blue accents and little seashell frames. How constrained those smiles and plastic poses were; birthdays, holidays, summer vacations. Funerals. In all that documentation of their lives, she has always found the cottage a place of fragility. Memories hazy in sepia and lens flares, distorting all the ugliness that often laid beneath those family trips. All her endless fights with her father. Then, later on, when things grew strained between her and the one person who had always been her refuge from those fitful storms of resentment and familial guilt, the cottage only seemed to solidify in her mind as a place she wanted to remember in a better light, but somehow could not quite muster the strength to. 

In a fit of sudden anxiety, Rey curls her fingers in Ben’s hair and kisses his forehead, like that one action might anchor her from the quicksand of the past. Like they can keep running forever, away and away. That the bottom won’t drop out on them at any second; all that bitter, cold reality. 

Ben exhales lowly and she knows that he is awake now. He shifts beside her and then she can see his eyes, all sleepy and sweet with morning daze. She looks at him in the soft glow of morning and it is on the tip of her tongue to say it, just ask him outright what they are going to do next, what is going to happen, but -

He smiles at her and her heart melts a little. 

The smile is slow, sleepy, and so utterly adoring that the words die on her tongue. She just… She’ll ask him later. After they get home. For now, she just wants to have this. She just wants to bask in the afterglow of last night and pretend, if only for a little while, that they are a normal couple. 

That everything is going to be alright. 

The things they did last night, the things he did to _ her _ … She loved every single moment of it. It was a lot - taking him in her mouth and letting him… Yeah. A lot. But also kind of amazing in only the way that it is with him. The fact she had her first blowjob last night and was not terrible at it is as surreal as it is achingly arousing. 

But there is something else she cannot quite wrap her head around. 

He let her call him daddy. He let her call him that and he  _ liked  _ it. Just as much as she did. Does that mean she can call him that whenever she wants? Obviously not in public, but when they are alone… 

_ Will there be a future when I can still call him that?  _ That traitorous voice of her rationality chimes in.  _ Because that’s the question, isn’t it? _

_ Not now,  _ the other half of Rey’s mind - the half-consumed by Ben’s warm smile and the growing heat between her legs - waspishly snipes.  _ Just - not now. Not yet. Please? _

The brown of his eyes is soft today and she smiles at him before she can think not to. His sleepy smile turns positively wolfish and she just blushes and buries half her face in the covers so it is only her eyes visible to him. 

“Morning,” he murmurs in that roughened morning rasp that makes her toes curl. 

“Hi,” she replies, her voice muffled by the covers. “So… did you have a good sleep?”

Now, it’s his turn to blush. Ben does not  _ do _ blushing, but there he is, the tips of his ears red and his cheeks pink. She thinks she might like to do all those things to him again if only to see him blush one more time. 

_ Good,  _ she thinks to herself.  _ Put all that other shit out of your mind for now. Just concentrate on the here and now. On Ben.  _

“I…” He pauses to drag himself closer to her until his arms are around her and she is shivering from the warmth of his skin. His cheeks are still pink when he grins at her, all wolf and satisfied male, when he says, “I’ve never come so hard in my life.”

The feeling that blooms through her then can only be called pride. All bright and warm, until she is grinning too, just as wolfishly as Ben. 

“We have to do that again.” The words are out of her mouth before she can think of something else to say and the look of pure lust that comes over his face makes her breath catch. 

“Fuck yes, we do,” he rumbles back at her and then he kisses her forehead, her cheeks and then lightly on the mouth. He pulls away before she can deepen it. She pouts and he bursts into raspy laughter. “I have to brush my teeth, you turkey. My breath is nothing you want to be near right now.”

“Hm,” Rey replies and she curls a finger into the black locks of his hair. “I guess mine wouldn’t be either.”

Her smirk is devilish, she knows, and it takes Ben a full minute to realize why. He chokes on a laugh and then he curls her in his arms and bounds out of the bed. The blanket falls off of them on the floor somewhere in the hallway, but they don’t care. Her shrieks and giggles fill the small wooden cabin and when they reach the bathroom, it is to discover that yes, there is hot water, and they make good use of it. 

And for now, just for now, she quiets the doubts in her mind. 

*

“What do you want to do today?”

Ben gives her a leering smirk over his plate of eggs and bacon. 

Rey sighs with exasperation. Though, of course, the effect is totally ruined by her pleased grin and scarlet blush. Damned insatiable man. 

“Was there anything else you wanted to do, though?”

“Just you.”

“ _ Ben _ .” 

Rey blows out a breath to cool off her reddening cheeks and he bursts in boyish laughter. She pauses to smile back at him, secretly wondering at how  _ easy going  _ Ben has been today. It’s almost as though a weight has been lifted off of him the moment they left town. This thought abruptly leads her back to her thoughts from earlier, to the questions of the future, of when they eventually have to go back home and…

_ Not now, Rey,  _ she tells herself.  _ Just enjoy your vacation. _

“Well, it’s raining, so the beach is out.” 

Rey shakes herself from her musings and glances out the window to the grey rain outside. “True. We could watch movies or something.”

_ Or just have amazing sex all the livelong day. I would be happy with that too,  _ Rey thinks but does not say. 

“I brought some other things, actually. Meant to bring them in last night, but I got distracted.” 

Ben tips her a wink and she sputters before he laughs at her again. He turns back to his breakfast and digs in with all the gusto she knows the man capable of. He loves breakfast. Well, bacon in particular. She doesn't know how often he eats it anymore since he has spent the last two years becoming something of a fitness junkie, but from the way he is eating it now, she privately muses that some things never change. 

“What other things?” 

She eats up her eggs and dips her bacon into her maple syrup. Ben’s eyebrows wrinkle when he watches her do this, as they always have since they were kids and she dipped just about everything in syrup. She grins as she takes a dramatic bite out of her bacon. 

Ben slowly shakes his head in muted disgust. 

“You’re so weird,” he remarks, but then, when she licks some syrup off her fingers his expression rapidly changes from disgust to  _ remembering _ . 

Rey blushes at the dark look in his eyes and clears her throat before they get distracted.  _ Again _ . Ben does not look away from her mouth, even after she wipes her fingers off with her napkin, and his response is slow and dazed. 

“Right well. I, uh, brought some art supplies for you. And my guitar.”

“ _ Really _ ?” Rey says, completely forgetting about their lust for the time being as she beams at him. “You brought it? I haven’t heard you play in years.”

Ben meets her eyes and then looks away, shrugging with what she knows is forced nonchalance. Really though, she can see his tiny, pleased smile. 

Once they’ve polished off their breakfast, Ben makes the brave dash outside through the rain and when he comes back in, he bears two big bags and his guitar case. He shakes his head like a dog shaking water from its fur, and she gets stuck on the image of  _ Ben  _ all wet, his shirt clinging to all those muscles and water dripping down his throat…

“Earth to Rey - want to help me with these?”

Rey makes a weird sound and jets up off the couch to go help, but not before she notices the knowing little grin on his face. Together, they bring the rest of their belongings inside. Once that chore is complete, Ben carries his guitar case over to the couch, while Rey tears into the bag of art supplies. She discovers a small easel and a beautiful canvas within. The paint and brushes are all high quality, expensive brands. She knows this because she makes regular trips to the art store near her house, staring longingly at all the art supplies her father will never buy for her. 

“Thank you, Ben.” She is so solemn and serious that Ben bursts into laughter. His cheeks are all pink again and despite his easy grin, she knows he is pleased. And she is… Horribly, in way-too-far-over-her-head in love with this man. 

She leans over the bags and his guitar case to give him a quick peck to the cheek, before settling into a comfortable spot on the floor near the fireplace. 

“Are you going to be comfortable on the floor?” Ben asks doubtfully. 

“Yep!” She’s arranged some pillows and a blanket on the floor to her liking and places the easel in front of her. It is the perfect height for her to paint at and before long, she starts humming to herself, gleefully opening her paints. 

“Alright, sweetheart. If you’re sure.”

Rey smiles at the endearment, her body reacting to that word like a Pavlovian command. 

“I’m sure,” she tells him in a demure murmur. 

He looks at her for a long moment, not quite smiling, but warm all the same. Then he turns back to his guitar and she returns to her painting. This is not exactly what she had in mind for them today, but she is glad he thought of it. Painting, playing guitar - it feels like  _ them  _ again, like a door has opened to the past and bridged them together when, for so long, they stood apart. The last week - and especially today - feels so dreamlike to her. Like there is a warm hue to everything she looks at, like sound and sensation are sweetly soft. 

She cannot help but find it all… strangely fragile, as she had this morning when she first awoke and could not decide if she was in the family cottage two years ago, or here in this cabin. She feels if she isn’t careful, this all might shatter apart, that the entire thing will crumble like a sandcastle. 

Some time goes by in which Ben is suspiciously quiet behind her. She is careful not to look directly at him when he starts tuning his guitar and before long he has the notes just as perfect as he had them before he went to med school and gave up on his dreams. She knows he will get all shy and awkward if he knows she is watching him - at least at the beginning - so she stays busy with her painting. 

This is something Ben needs to do for himself more than for anyone else. 

Staring down at a particularly merry shade of blue, her thoughts drift away as she peers around the room for a better look than the one she got yesterday. The wood panelling on the walls is pretty, if a little outdated. Country charm - that is what Leia would call this place. Rey decides she likes it. The furniture is clearly old but well cared for. The park owners must make sure each of the cabins is in good repair. There is a faint, wooden mustiness to the cabin - not unpleasant, but noticeable. 

The scent is familiar and after a few moments, Rey realizes why. 

The family cottage had the same smell. A mixture of cedar, moisture and slight disuse. But the cottage is gone now. Burned to the ground. She briefly wonders how devastated Leia will be over it. She does not know if Ben has told her yet, or if he is waiting until they get back. Rey gets an unpleasant little jolt to the stomach at that thought. The seed of doubt reopens like it was waiting all this time for her to think of it again. 

Because they will have to go back to the real world at some point.

How long will it take before that small splinter of doubt - and yes, fine, resentment - grows into something so large that neither of them can contain it anymore? All she knows is how she feels when they are together - even in small moments like this when they are not even speaking to each other, but simply and perfectly comfortable in each other’s company. She knows that she loves him and that he loves her, and that nothing has ever felt more right than this - all their lovely, filthy, and heated moments, and in these quiet, regular and pedestrian moments as well. 

But will contentment be enough? Will she always be satisfied with this being just their dirty little secret?

Suddenly, a feeling of sadness goes through her before she can staunch it - just as it did yesterday on the drive out. She does not want to feel that burning pit of loss that she has become so accustomed to for the last several years. She tries to push a breath out, to remember that things have changed, that she and Ben are here, now,  _ together _ . That the past can just stay where it is meant to be - in the past. 

But she can’t quite shake that feeling. 

From behind her, Ben’s random strumming has grown into a song, though it is not a one Rey knows. It is one, she suspects, that he has written on his own. The song feels lonely to her, the kind of thing old men write when they’ve come to the end of the road and there is nothing else around them but cobwebs and regrets. 

She looks at the tubes of paint in her hand like she does not know what they are, and tries to dispel that shakiness, that stilted murmur of unease. 

_ It’s not going to be like it was. He promised,  _ she tries to tell herself, but some other voice speaks in her head. A voice she has come to recognize as Adult. 

_ Do you really think this little fantasy can last forever? _

Rey drops the blue back in the bag and after a moment of indecisiveness reaches for the tube of black. The beginning is always the hardest part - deciding what to render in what will inevitably be an imperfect copy of the image in her mind. Finding the perfect brush, picking the spot to touch down with that first stroke of colour - these are not decisions to be taken lightly. 

Only now, she knows exactly what she is going to paint. 

The black line she slashes across the middle of the canvas feels prophetic to her and for once, while her back is turned to Ben and he cannot see, she does not fight away the past anymore. The day she has tried so hard to ignore, the day she finds herself returning to time and time again like a ghost to a familiar haunt, is not something she can shelve away in the dim cellar of her mind, never to be looked at again. It has a voice, that memory, and for once, she is going to listen. 

The line on the canvas was her beginning, all those years ago. Of her art, of her awareness of the world. It is something that does not belong solely to her, though.

It is theirs. 

*

She feels old in this memory. Older, with each passing second. 

Rey cannot really imagine what a true winter feels like. Not in the full sense of the word that people experience in the northern part of this country. Howling winds, snowbanks as tall as houses, and a fearsome cold that blisters skin - perhaps she should not find such a notion romantic. Everyone goes on about how desolate those long, winter months are but she knows that true desolation is not about climate or temperature. 

It’s a feeling. A burden. A sodden cross to bear. 

Rey sits on her bed with the door closed. She listens to Leia and Luke whispering downstairs in the kitchen. Well - they  _ think  _ they’re whispering, but she can hear them about as clearly as if they were speaking right outside her door. Her things are put away already - she never packs much - and she has some canvas with her that she does not remotely feel like touching. 

She has been trying to ignore them for over twenty minutes, even going so far as to dig her iPod out of her bag, only to discover that it is dead and she forgot her charging cable at home. So she sits on her bed and listens to them, wondering if Ben is doing the same thing down the hall, where he has sequestered himself since they arrived at the cottage a half-hour ago. 

“Well, I’m certainly not going to broach the subject.” Leia attempts to be a little quieter, anyway. Her hushed stage whisper, while ridiculous, is at least subdued enough that Rey doesn’t think she is  _ intentionally _ trying to broadcast this conversation. “The last time I tried talking to Ben about it, he didn’t return my texts or calls for over three days. I had to show up at his apartment with a casserole before he would talk to me again. I don’t know what happened between them but…”

“Just leave it.” Luke, on the other hand, knows  _ exactly  _ what he is doing. His tone is much louder, a little above normal volume. The message comes to the upstairs occupants loud and clear -  _ sort your shit out and stop making everything so damned awkward for me. _ “They have to figure this out themselves. Rey is practically an adult now - she has to grow up sometime. If you ask me, Ben is far too lenient with her.”

Rey snaps her gaze towards her bedroom door as though they are, in fact, just outside her room. She hates that Ben can hear this conversation, she hates that she is so vulnerable and exposed without being given a voice to argue against any of this. Though, she is not about to march downstairs and confront them over it either. 

Besides, what would she tell them? That she is mad at her cousin because he had the audacity to have sex with another woman? That she has been in love with Ben for - let’s see -  _ forever _ ? That her heart is broken and their relationship will likely never recover from it? 

She would laugh if she was not so miserable. 

“And just  _ who _ is saying that this is her fault?” Leia demands, forgetting to keep her voice down. 

Rey feels a brief rush of gratitude towards her aunt, but it is short-lived. 

Somehow, in a prelude to misery, she knows exactly what is about to come out of her father’s mouth; the same thing he likes to yell at her when she complains that she does not want to go to med school, or that she wishes he was home more often, or when she makes the mistake of wandering into her mother’s sitting room with her cup of juice and spills it all over those broken memories. The stains in the carpet have come out, but something far more important has been scarred for life. She doubts her father would have much sympathy for her if she told him that, though.

And then, the punchline comes, only no one is laughing. 

“All I am saying is that Rey is my daughter and I love her, but the squeaky wheel always gets the grease, doesn’t it?”

Rey does not hear what Leia replies with, or if she does at all. She can imagine a shocked, perhaps even horrified expression on her aunt’s face. Being blessed with a visual mind affords Rey the benefit - and often the detriment - of being able to imagine quite a lot. She can also imagine the cold, disdainful look on her father’s face. He probably already has a beer can in one hand. He is probably already halfway on his way to getting righteously blasted. 

The warmth and light that fills his eyes in all those old photos, where he is with her mother and she is still alive - that light has gone out over the years. Luke has nothing left to give Rey. Most of the time, this does not bother her. She has accepted it - the way she has accepted she is left-handed and will never have big boobs like some of the girls at school. The way she is beginning to accept that no one in the family cares about her anymore - that Ben has school and women and… He can barely stand to look at her anymore, can’t he?

Because her father is right and that’s the real shit of it all. He is  _ right  _ about her. 

Suddenly, the room feels too hot. Like there is not enough air to breathe. Tears fall down her face and she does not wipe them away because she is hardly aware of them being there. She just knows she cannot stay another moment in this cottage. Not with Leia and her worrying, not with Ben and his cold avoidance, and not with her father who resents her very existence. His happy little accident. 

There is a reason Rey picks this bedroom every time they come to stay here. Unlike the other rooms in the cottage, there is a small ledge just outside her window. Strut up against the side of the house, right below that little ledge, is a sturdy lattice that once had roses on it. The roses died years ago, but neither Luke nor Leia have gotten around to taking down the lattice or planting anything else on it. 

An eerie, cold stillness settles over her bones, pulling her into a calm, reasonable walk across her room and to the window. She is still wearing her hoodie and coat. She has a spare pair of tennis shoes in her bag. She gets them out but does not put them on yet. If she can hear her aunt and father talking from up here, they would hear her shoes on the floor just as well and wonder what she was doing. Or maybe they would not notice or care. 

Maybe, she is tired of being the squeaky wheel that always needs the grease. 

*

It started as a line, all those years ago. On that plane ride to Ohio, to the first funeral that Rey ever went to, but could not remember. 

On the couch behind her, Ben has started singing. His voice carries across the small living room and though his voice should not be so beautiful, it is. He has always been beautiful to her, all sharpened lines and heady contradictions. It is the same song he was playing earlier only now there are lyrics for it, the same lonely tune she does not know the name of. This is not something he would do in front of anyone else, as far as she knows. Maybe with Mitaka, but even then she is not sure. He hates to be vulnerable almost as much as she does and yet when he sings, it is as though his voice carries magical properties with it; where he has given her the gift of teleportation to another world, or dimension. To versions of themselves where they stand opposite on a battlefield, where they can feel each other from across a wavering universe, and always,  _ always,  _ where they find their way back to each other. 

Why do they feel so inevitable when at the same time everything feels a breath away from shattering to pieces? They are precarious filaments, placed on a fine, spinning axis. On a single fine line. 

Rey washes her brush off and reaches for orange next. 

*

She feels a cheap thrill in this memory. 

This is not something she has ever done before. Of course, at school, she’s heard about other kids running away from home. They have had substantially better reasons than she does. Broken homes, abuse, neglect, addictions - plenty of reasons to leave and stay gone. 

Her reason? That her father doesn’t love her? That she can hardly stand to look her cousin in the eye because every time she does, she just wants to tell him she is in love with him, that this is the way things are supposed to be, and he just needs to… 

The climb down from the roof has scraped her hands quite badly. She almost relishes the pain. 

Rey makes for the treeline. Before she can second guess herself, she pushes her way through the brambles and naked trees, and her fingers are already cold by the time she looks back. Just once. 

She can no longer see the cottage and for the first time in weeks, she is relieved. 

*

What comes next? 

The sunset, in all its fiery glory. The horizon line, and that stretch of blue, to purple, to the black of space high above it. 

Rey ponders over her painting for a long moment. Peering over her shoulder, she notes that Ben appears lost in his own little world as well. He has stopped singing but he continues to play, and it is his hands that she finds herself looking at then. Those thick fingers strumming the notes with such natural ease. He has strummed  _ her  _ with the same ease, as well. He has held her with those hands, cradled her, held her face while he kissed her, and used them to bring her to a new kind of bliss she never thought possible. 

She holds up her right hand, examining a piece of herself she has always taken for granted and has never really paid much mind to. Reaching for the white, yellow, and pink, she sets out to find the ending that she knows off by heart. 

*

She feels lost in this memory. 

Out to sea, tetherless and boundless. For the first half of her aimless pilgrimage into the woods, there is a peacefulness to her aloneness, out here in the barren wild, and although she is still heart sick at the mere  _ thought _ of Ben and though she is still mightily furious with her father, she takes the reprieve she feels now and hangs onto it because it won’t be long before all those other unwanted emotions begin to creep back in. The self-pity, the despair. The gut wrenching bitterness. 

However, there is one feeling that is beginning to prevail above them all. 

Anxiousness begins to churn in her stomach and throat, a keen pressure that all grow more prevalent with each passing moment, though she supposes in the last hour the word “anxious” has become a bit of an understatement. Perhaps  _ frightened  _ is a much better word because she is a hair away from flying into an outright panic. 

She is lost. Quite lost. She has been for almost two hours now. 

The trees are all beginning to look the same. There are no footpaths - not at this time of year with the ground all sodden and frozen in places. She does not recognize her surroundings and she cannot hear anything save for her own footsteps and her panicked breathing. How long has she been coming to the cottage? How many years have she and Ben wandered this forest together? Shouldn’t she know where she is by now?

Or is it because Ben is not with her, her tall and dark compass? 

Such a thought is irrational but she cannot help but note the truth of it. She is wandering and aimless, and while the cold does not hold the bite of true winter, it is starting to get to her. Teeth chattering, muscles clenched and tremoring. Eyes wild on the unbidden trees and brambles, and god, nothing is familiar or sane anymore. 

She keeps walking anyway. 

*

The painting is almost finished. It is just missing one thing, but she cannot for the life of her think of what that might be. 

Their hands are simple silhouettes, yet unmistakably theirs all the same. Between them is the empty space of sunset, horizon and darkened sky. Something still feels missing, a piece to their puzzle she cannot quite solve yet. That empty space seems to mock her and is then that she realizes that however, close those hands might get, they will never quite touch. 

Outside this cabin, there is a whole world waiting for them. A world in which they have lives, friends, family. In which they have responsibilities and duties. In which Ben must dress up as a doctor and play his part, and Rey must send out those college applications and begin upon the path to adulthood she has been so fruitlessly avoiding for over two years. 

But it’s not just adulthood she has been avoiding. 

And it hurts. The last sliver of her childhood, of her flawless and righteous youth, is being stripped away. Here and now, in this very room. All her childish dreams of finding a way to be together, all her hopes that one day things might aline properly, and only for them - she knows what happens as soon as they leave this cabin. 

All those hopes and dreams will die. 

Rey puts down her paintbrush at the same time Ben stops playing the guitar. They’re operating on the same frequency - she can feel that almost as keenly as her own stuttered heartbeat. She hears the small sigh he makes, she hears him put the guitar aside and lean back on the sofa. Rey takes her own second to collect herself. Her muscles are tense, her stomach twisted into anxious knots. She knows what she needs to do now. She knows, but turning back to him is the hardest thing she can do. 

He is already looking at her when she stands up to face him and he knows exactly what she is going to say. She is not overly surprised to find that she is already crying, just a little. And she is not overly surprised to find that he is too. She knows what she needs to do now; what she must ask of him. 

And she knows it is all too likely that he will say no, but fear has never stopped her before. She is a  _ Gryffindor _ , after all. She’ll just have to be brave for both of them. 

“We need to talk,” Rey says into the quiet cabin. 

Ben looks away from her as though to regard her any longer will cause him physical pain. He tucks his lips in and she can feel the decision he has made before he replies with such quiet sorrow she feels it in her bones. 

“I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, sorry, a bit of a cliff-hanger, but don't fret too much! All will be revealed very soon. <3
> 
> A small note about Luke: 
> 
> He is going to come across in a not great light at times in this story, but there is a slight redemption arc here for him too. I really wanted to embody the place he was at in TLJ. I know for some his characterization in that film was not popular, but as a long-time fan of Star Wars (since I was in diapers) I really saw a lot of call-backs of where Luke was at in Empire Strikes Back to the place we find him in TLJ - he is someone who is apt to get lost easily and wallow in self-pity. While that is not always what we want in a hero, it is a very human - and realistic - portrayal of someone who feels they have failed. In this case, Luke lost his wife and he is raising a daughter he does not understand, nor that he has very much in common with. Coupled with addiction issues, it really is a recipe for disaster. 
> 
> That doesn't make Luke a bad person. It makes him flawed and difficult to sympathize with at times, but it also makes him human.
> 
> Anywho, hope that makes sense. No one has said anything negative about his characterization, but I do feel a little justification is needed here. I love Luke as a character and I love with Rian Johnson did with him in TLJ. Might be an unpopular opinion, but as the old saying goes, opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one ;)


	12. Coming Back to Call Your Bluff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before she can begin to speak, to tell him it is over and this was a mistake and they can’t, they just fucking can’t, he suddenly can’t breathe. 
> 
> So, Ben does the only thing he has ever been any good at. 
> 
> He gets up off the couch and runs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahahaha, I said these chapters would be shorter - but who was I kidding? So I did not plan to update this soon buuuuuuut I was on a roll today and thought to myself - why not? Your comments have all been seriously amazing and have really given me the confidence to keep going with this story, so I wanted to show some love and give you this update early. <3
> 
> Warning ahead for mild violence and very brief suicidal ideation. It is important to the story, so please bear with me. 
> 
> We have one more chapter to go folks! Next update might be a bit slower as I am still writing that chap. 
> 
> enjoy folks! <3

Ben has a lot of memories too, of course. 

Some are hated. Some are cherished. The ones with Rey are what he holds the dearest. Always.

He remembers the plane ride to Ohio like it happened yesterday. He remembers the crayon drawing, the black line in the middle of all that white, and feeling like he might be able to get through the next forty-eight hours without completely falling apart. He remembers Han’s funeral, though he knows Rey does not. How she had held his hand and did not let go once, even when his mother pulled away to stand at the graveside alone, until Luke joined her. Arm in arm. Part of him wanted to hate his mother for that, but he knows better now. 

Grief is sometimes best experienced in aloneness. 

He remembers inheriting The Falcon, spending countless hours fixing the hunk of junk until it became something more. Something that was his. He remembers countless days spent upgrading the upholstery, fixing the engine, and tweaking the brakes; how Rey dutifully handed him tools, how she would tell him about her day and the kids she didn’t like at school. How she once puked all over the backseat and how she had burst into tears, thinking that she had somehow ruined the car. He had not been mad at her, though. He found that he was rarely ever mad at that girl. He remembers when Rey began to get older and how she would tell him about different art schools that Luke would never let her go to. 

Ben listened to every word as he rebuilt The Falcon. It became their after school ritual. 

He remembers the moment he realized that The Falcon was never really just his car. No. 

It was theirs. His and Rey’s. 

He remembers their makeshift karaokes during countless drives over the years; singing together in her bedroom, in backyards, grocery stores and during grim holiday dinners when both their parents were too drunk to be fully present. He remembers having tea parties with her when she was little, how she dressed up as Disney princesses. He remembers November Christmases and every space they have ever occupied together. 

Ben remembers holding her hand when her mother died and telling her that there is no God. He remembers promising to never leave her and how it was the first of many promises he would break. Years later, he remembers finding her broken in one of her blanket forts, with white Christmas lights in her hair. How he had wished he could kiss her to make the pain go away. 

There is one day that Ben wishes he could not remember. Sometimes, he wishes he could take it all back, but then he thinks that perhaps it was not supposed to go any other way. 

He met Bazine in bio-med. He hated the course even though he was passing with flying colours, though he thinks now he really just hated it _because_ he did so well in it. He never had to work hard at the things he despised in life and that was the biggest joke of all. Bazine sat next to him for one of their labs, despite his often morose and closed-off demeanour, and they somehow hit it off almost immediately. Same taste in music, same affinity for black clothing and fast cars. Things were pleasant between them but there was never this great _click_ he often heard his roommate Mitaka go on about. 

Chemistry only goes so far, after all. 

Perhaps there was more to his lacklustre interest, though. Bazine was beautiful, smart, funny. A good lay too, which never hurt. She indulged in some of his less conventional tastes, but… Everything had begun to take on a dullness. From Bazine, to school, to his music - to just about everything. 

Thinking on it a few years later, Ben muses that the dredge he found himself in for that fall semester had far less to do with switching majors and everything to do with that one, small, _tiny_ thing he was ignoring. How he had begun to notice how beautiful Rey was (even though he always thought so, in a distant sort of way). How he had begun to notice that she was becoming a woman, his heart beating a little faster every time she entered the room. How, seemingly overnight, he began to wake up from dreams of her, his cock painfully hard and filled to the brim with shame. 

Bazine looked a little like Rey. Vaguely, if you squinted your eyes and tilted your head to the side. He likes to think that it had not been a conscious thing, in the beginning. That he had not started seeing her because of her resemblance to his cousin, but because she was smart and funny and really knew how to dance. They had sex on the first date and although it was not Ben’s first time, it _was_ the first time he came inside another woman while he pictured Rey. Her hair, her eyes, her fucking smile - all of it flashed before his eyes when the crest came. 

Bazine was nice. She deserved better. He regrets it all, only because he was not the only one who suffered for his foolish mistakes. Bazine had suffered too, but he had not known this until much too late. And by then, he was so absorbed in his own personal hell that he did not care. 

Rey was not supposed to come over so early that day in November. Or maybe he forgot she was helping his mother decorate the house. He is not really sure why it all happened the way it did, only that it did.

He remembers finding Rey on the swings behind his house. She had told him that he was fragile, in that terrible, seething voice and it was only until after that he realized how much it had scared him. Because _she_ had been the adult in that situation, despite her reaction. He had felt then like the world was about to drop away from him at any moment. Up until the moment he sat down on that swing next to her, he kept convincing himself that she hadn’t come up the stairs. That she hadn’t heard him _almost_ say her name while he fucked Bazine, that she hadn’t _seen_ …

The tears in her eyes had been enough for him to know. 

Right up until that moment, Ben really thought he was the only one suffering. But he wasn’t. That was the fuck of it all. She felt the same way and for one heart-stuttered second, he was willing to throw it all away and tell her that he loved her too, that he wanted her and no one else, and that he was going _insane_ every moment not spent with her. 

But he could never do that to her. She was still so young. She had her life ahead of her and she didn’t need him to fuck it all up on her. 

After that, he stopped answering Rey’s texts. He stayed away from her house and told himself he was looking out for her. That he was trying to protect her. Really, he knew the truth. Really, it was because he was - and is - a coward. 

Because she had been right, of course. He is fragile. 

He remembers hearing her in her room, a few days after she smashed his mother Christmas ornament into a thousand pieces. He remembers knowing that he should leave, that he should not listen to the sounds of her getting herself off, but also that he could not move. He wanted so badly to go to her, to be with her… But it wasn’t right. She was his _cousin_ , and she was so much younger than him. Still a kid, for Christ’s sake. 

Things well and truly fell apart after that, but all of that paled next to what happened at the family cottage. Two years of misery and despair, all because of his cowardice. And still, even to this day, the memory of that weekend summons fresh regret. Everything he had ever wanted was right at his fingertips and he had fucked it all up. 

All in the name of protecting Rey. 

Ben remembers every time he has come to the thought of her. He remembers feeling shame and disgust with himself because he has always been a piece of shit and he has never been worthy of her. He remembers a knowing glint in his mother’s eye, right around the time he stopped spending time with Rey, and he remembers drowning himself in other women, in booze and work and school and sleeping pills, like that might take away his longing. Like it might make it any less obvious to the world - and especially to his mother - that he is hopelessly in love with the one person he cannot have. 

He remembers drinking one night until he blacked out and waking up in his dorm crying, with his head in Mitaka’s lap, puke drying on his chin, and soft fingers in his hair while his friend whispered to him that it was going to be alright. He remembers not really believing it, not for a damned second, because Rey was not by his side and she never could be. 

Most of all, he remembers the first time he kissed her. Her hands in his hair, pool water lapping against their skin, and that blistering, burning hope in his chest that it would all work out in the end... 

*

Ben tries to draw up that memory now. 

She is standing above him, with paint on her hands and tears on her cheeks. There are no white Christmas lights in her hair, but even now he feels like everything that is right and good in this world is in her eyes, in her smile, in her fucking _voice._ Nothing will ever replace that for him. 

“We need to talk,” the love of his life tells him and she looks so frightfully adult in that moment that he cannot bear to look at her anymore. 

“I know.” But really he does not know a fucking thing. He is supposed to be the grown-up here, but he knows that was never really true. It has always been her. 

Before she can begin to speak, to tell him it is over and this was a mistake and they can’t, they just fucking _can’t_ , he suddenly can’t breathe. 

So, Ben does the only thing he has ever been any good at. 

He gets up off the couch and _runs_. 

*

He is twenty-five in this memory and he is fucking _frantic_. 

They have been on the phone to the police, they have combed the woods behind the cottage, they have called her cell and sent her a million texts but no matter how loudly he hollers her name, no matter how long they search, they cannot find her. 

Rey is gone. 

He should have gone straight to her room after he heard what Luke said. It should not have even been a question. If he had, he could have stopped her from leaving, they could have fucking talked this all out, and then she would still be here. Then, there wouldn’t be this paralyzing coldness in his chest because what if she isn’t okay? What if she fell and hit her head, or she is scared and lost out there, and what if - _fuck -_ what if they never find her?

“Ben.”

He is pacing across the front yard, his boots covered in mud and his hair standing on end from how hard he has been pulling at it. The cold does not reach him, not with the fear and worry boiling in his blood. He pulls up short and sees his mother standing at the bottom of the porch. Her cheeks are red from the cold and she is holding a steaming mug of what he suspects to be hot chocolate - his favourite. They only just got back from searching the woods twenty minutes ago. Luke is likely grabbing a beer out of the fridge and on his way to getting sauced. 

All the while, his daughter is out there, alone and lost and…

“Ben,” Leia repeats in a stronger tone. He stops when he realizes he has started pacing again. When she comes the rest of the way down the porch and goes to hand him the mug, he looks down at it like he does not even recognize what a mug is. “You have to calm down, honey. She just got upset and took off to cool down. The cops are out looking for her right now-”

“This is his fault,” Ben snaps angrily. He glowers up at the cottage and then stalks away from his mother without taking the mug. “Fucking asshole couldn’t keep his mouth shut, could he? If something happens to her -”

A small hand grasps his arm and when he swings around, Leia does not baulk or so much as bat an eye at the rage in his eyes. She goes on holding his arm, like he isn’t about to jump out of his skin with worry. 

“Take this. It’s burning my hand.”

Ben huffs down at his mother, breath vaporizing in the air. She gestures the mug at him and he finally takes it. He does not sip from it because it feels wrong to enjoy such frivolous things as hot chocolate when Rey is out there, in the woods. Missing. 

“Are you going to tell me what happened?”

He blinks down at his mother and his mouth contorts with the only reply he can give her because isn’t it obvious - Luke fucked up. _Again_. Like he’s been doing for years, now.

But then he takes in the calm, patient, and _knowing_ glint in his mother’s eyes. He is not aware how eerily similar that expression is to the one he has often aimed at Rey when he knows she is lying or concealing something from him. He has inherited this trait from his mother, this _knowing_ gene that while not transmissible through blood - since he is adopted - is certainly learned from years of being Leia Organa’s son. 

Ben looks down at the hot chocolate because that is easier all of sudden. Leia Organa might be a lot of things - love-starved, shallow, and blisteringly hopeful when no one else in the family is - but she is not stupid. 

“We fought.” 

Those two words say so much more for him that he cannot; that punch-packed somberness only he can muster, stricken right to the core. He wishes those words could be true, that it was just a simple argument that he had shaken his world apart until he saw nothing but Rey’s eyes when he turned in for sleep every night. 

He wishes it could only be that easy. 

Leia lingers at his side and the two of them regard the barren trees together, like they might be able to summon Rey out of the ether. The sun is almost down and all he wants to do is go back out there, even though the police told them not to. He should not be here, wasting precious time. He should be looking for her. It is a pull in his bones, a tension he cannot deny. Like he and Rey are two opposing poles, drawn together by gravity’s pull. Like they are incomplete without one another, two halves of a whole. 

“Ben…”

He closes his eyes and cringes against what his mother might say next. His name is a loaded gun, the distance between it and the next words only a short burst of energy before it all falls apart on him. Because he is suddenly certain that his mother knows _everything_. That she always has, in her own way, and that the careful distance he has erected between him and Rey over the last couple months is like a siren for all his secrets. 

“ _Ben_!” his mother says again, only now she is shouting his name.

When he opens his eyes, he does not understand why Leia is suddenly running towards the trees. She slips in the snow but somehow she finds her footing and keeps going. He does not understand that she is not yelling at him, not really. She is trying to get his attention because…

Rey seems very small when she emerges from the underbrush. Her eyes are like twin dark circles on her face, wide and unseeing. Her cheeks are red and chapped, and her lips are bleeding a little. Likely from her chewing on them, a nervous habit Ben has tried to break her out of since she was four. She wears a thin jacket and a pair of tennis shoes. Her hair is in a messy bun and full of dead leaves and thistles. 

She has never looked more beautiful to him. 

For a long moment, Ben cannot move at all. Shock - this is what shock feels like. They talk about in med school all the time, that it is deadly when it strikes. Almost irreversible. Ben knows what that means now, a little. 

Rey is right there, stumbling through the snow like she has no idea at all where she is, her eyes jumping from the snow to his mother, to _him_. And still, he cannot move. The mug of steaming hot chocolate burns his hand, but he does not feel that either. He is just… staring at Rey. Gobsmacked. 

“Oh my god - honey!” Leia cries. Rey trips and Ben knows she is going to fall. That nothing will prevent her fall because she does not even seem to be aware of where she is. 

And then he moves. 

The mug of hot chocolate shatters on the frozen ground and he steps right through the broken glass without noticing or caring, his boots crunching in the debris. Somehow, he reaches Rey before Leia does. Somehow, he prevents her fall, his hands wrapping around her skinny arms, so that it is less of a fall and more of a slide right into his open arms. Somehow, he is right there when he probably shouldn’t be. The proximity between them is _shattering_ , but he stows away his shameful desire and focuses on the fact that Rey is here, she is in one piece, and he will never let her out of his sight again. 

Which, of course, isn’t true. 

He isn’t a misogynistic prick, for one thing, and for another, he knows that he can’t stand to be close to her for longer than a few minutes... Because of the proximity. Not because he jerked off just last night thinking about her fucking _smile_ of all goddamned things, not because his heart beats a little faster when she is near and all he wants to do is pack them both into his car and drive as far away from this place as possible. Somewhere they can be alone and together because deep down, he knows that is what she wants too. 

But they can’t. Even if it were possible, he would not do that to her. She deserves better than him - she deserves everything. 

“I got lost,” Rey slurs at him and he knows it is not because she is drunk, but because she is in shock. True medical shock. 

His dazed spell ends abruptly and he spurs into action. He clutches her close, rubbing his fingers gently against her knuckles to warm the frigid skin. 

“I know,” he tells her quietly, “It’s okay. You’re back and that’s all that matters.”

Leia fusses over her, but it is Ben who hefts her up into his arms and carries her into the cottage. Rey starts shivering uncontrollably in his arms. She tucks her face into the open zipper of his jacket, her nose runny and cold as she presses it into the skin of his throat. He swallows thickly, infuriated all over again with Luke but also… Relieved. To have her back, yes, but to have her in his arms. This is where they are meant to be. 

This thought is completely irrational and likely a product of his own addled nerves, but it is pervasive all the same. 

“It’s okay, sweetheart. Everything is okay. You’re safe now,” he mumbles into his hair. She starts to weep quietly, cold tears running down his clavicles and to his chest, and when his own vision splinters into suspicious prisms, the only thing he knows for certain is that he is doomed. 

Completely and totally fucked for her. 

*

He is mindless about where he goes. The wind is cold, the sand wet and sticky with recent rain. Like mud. He can hear the ocean from just over the sand dune, so he goes that way. The cabin is long behind him now, but still, he feels like nowhere will be far enough. He does not look behind him to see if Rey has followed him, though he knows she likely has. 

Or maybe, this time she won’t. 

Maybe she knows better than to try anymore. 

*

They are in the kitchen in this memory. 

The family cottage, all pine wood accents and blue countertops like a country house out of a real estate magazine. Ben has always hated it, but he does not complain. They are fortunate enough to have a cottage at all and the decor makes his mother happy. Reminding her of simpler times, when she and Han lived here, together, all those years ago. 

Rey is shivering miserably, though she has stopped crying. Mostly, she looks regretful. Pale with shock. Leia brings in a throw from the living room and adds it to the three blankets already draped over Rey’s shoulders. 

Ben quietly thanks her. He takes Rey’s hands in his own, so much smaller than his, and rubs them together to create warmth. Her nail beds are blue and he has already checked her feet for frostbite. It’s a fucking miracle he didn’t find any - it has been an unseasonably cold winter in California and she was out there in the forest for hours…

He still cannot quite calm down his heart rate. He keeps thinking _what if she never found her way back, what if, what if, what if_ and has to ground himself by looking into her eyes even though she refuses to meet his gaze. 

“I just got off the phone with the police. They asked if we needed an ambulance. I politely reminded the constable that this is a house of MDs. We’ll be fine. Won’t we, sweetheart?” Leia presses a gentle kiss to Rey’s cheek. 

Rey blushes red - a good sign as far as Ben is concerned - and mumbles under her breath in embarrassment. 

“Do you want anything? Hot chocolate?” Ben asks her quietly. 

Before Rey can answer, Leia claps her hands like this is the best idea she has ever heard. He internally rolls his eyes. His mother’s answer to everything - hot chocolate, or Chardonnay, depending on the day. 

“I’ll get the marshmallows. I know you love them in your cocoa.”

“I’m okay… you guys don’t need to fuss over me. I’m feeling better now, really.” Rey shrugs an arm out of the blankets to push her hair away from her face. She meets Ben’s eyes briefly, but looks away too quickly for him to see the expression there. 

“What happened? Did you get lost?” Ben bends down a little so his face is level with hers, so she can no longer avoid his questioning gaze. 

“A little,” she admits. She shrugs again and stares down at her lap. 

Right to where their hands are still clasped together. 

Ben quickly distances himself from her when he realizes they are just… holding hands. He unwillingly steps away from her, putting the appropriate amount of distance between them. After what happened today - hell, even the last few months - he thinks this gesture will bring her relief but she doesn’t look happy at all when he leans against the opposite counter. 

Leia bustles around the kitchen, rifling through the cupboards for the tin of hot chocolate, when Rey suddenly leaps down from the counter. Ben stiffens and _almost_ reaches out to stop her. Not to pull her into his arms and hug her. Nope. Not to keep her in his arms until that damnable expression drops away from her face and she promises to never, ever leave his sight again. He would never _actually_ make her do this... But he thinks about it. 

“Where are you going?” Leia demands. 

At any other time, Ben would have burst into laughter at how unkempt his mother is in this moment. It is so utterly out of character for her not to have every strand of hair intricately placed exactly so, for her clothing to be anything other than immaculate and neatly pressed. Right now, though, she is the very portrait of frumpiness. Her winter hat is askew, the small pom-pom sitting near her right temple like she is making a bad attempt at imitating a rap artist. Her hair is sticking out from under the hat, static-clung. Her clothing is askew, her sweater crumpled from her hastily throwing her jacket on earlier when they searched the woods. 

Only, right now, her appearance does not make Ben laugh. 

It only serves to remind him of the frenzy of the last few hours, when they had spent the better part of the day scouring the woods for Rey. He had not considered how worried his mother had been at all, too busy with his own pity party to consider that Rey scared a lot of people today. Whether it was intentional or not. 

And suddenly, he is a little angry. He knows why she did it, but that doesn’t make it okay. 

“I want to take a bath,” Rey tells Leia sullenly. She won’t look at Ben at all now. 

Leia scoffs at her, incredulous and disgruntled. “Do you have any idea how concerned we were? Your father nearly had a heart attack and don’t even get me started on how much you made Ben worry.”

His mother's hat sinks down another inch, nearly covering her eyes. She goes to fix it before opting to just yank it off her head and toss it on the counter. 

“Look - I’m sorry I made you all worry." Rey starts backing away, sounding all at once like the petulant teenager she is. "I really didn’t mean to. I just want to take a bath and warm up. I’ll be upstairs.”

She goes to leave but Ben isn’t having it. Maybe he should be more understanding, but only twenty minutes ago he was _out of his mind_ with worry that something horrible had happened to her. That they would never find her again. They had the fucking _police_ out there looking for her. She can’t just go running off into her bedroom after that. 

“ _Rey_ ,” Ben begins - not quite sternly, but in that ballpark. 

She freezes at the threshold of the kitchen and turns around to aim a wounded look at him. “I already said -”

“Oh yes, we heard your half-assed apology.”

All three of them turn to find Luke standing in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. His eyes are bloodshot. The beer bottle in his hand is empty. He has missed a few buttons in his green flannel shirt and his gait is noticeably crooked as he shuffles unevenly in the kitchen.

Ben’s stomach sinks with dread. 

Luke is _hammered_. 

He knows all the signs - he has seen him like this quite a few times over the years. Ever since Aunt Katherine died. He must have been chugging back the beers ever since they got back from searching the woods for Rey. Quite a few, from Ben’s estimation. 

If it is at all possible, Rey seems to pale even more than before. Ghostly white and drawn with clear apprehension. 

Leia sighs. The sound is tremulous and hollow. “Luke, let’s go back to the living room,” she begins to say. She gets about halfway across the kitchen before it happens. 

Luke throws his beer bottle across the room, where it smashes against the front door. Rey jumps, whimpering in shock. The sound goes right through Ben and any anger he might have felt towards her evaporates in a heartbeat. Glass showers the floor, the scent of beer permeating in the air. Without thinking, Ben grabs his mother’s arm, halting her progress. Luke is not usually a violent man, but sometimes when he is drinking he can become a hair unreasonable. As he is right now. 

Luke points a wavering finger at his sister, and Ben knows the look in those bloodshot green eyes. That brand of drunken righteousness rarely comes out in his uncle. Luke is not a mean drunk - at least, not usually. But every once in a while something sets him off. 

Usually involving his daughter. 

The blankets fall off Rey’s shoulders, but she does not appear to notice. The shock has seemed to wear off and then she just looks weary and resentful as she stares at her drunk father. Like she knows exactly what he is going to say, like this is an old play between them. Song as old as time. 

“Luke,” Ben says forcefully, in an attempt to salvage this before it goes completely off the rails. He is using his most rational tone, the one that says _you and I are both reasonable adults, so can you please calm down_ , but he can already tell that Luke is not a reasonable type of mood. That he is very far from it. “Let’s take a deep breath, here. You just threw a beer bottle, for Christ's sake. You could have hurt someone.”

“Nope,” Luke says to him in a deceptively light tone. Ben blinks back at him in confusion before he realizes that his uncle is not disagreeing with his assertion. Luke raises his eyebrows and smiles, though the fatuousness of it is rather chilling when mixed with the clear rage in his eyes. “No, no, no. We’re not going to do this your way this time, Ben. We’re not going to mollycoddle her, or give her hot chocolate, or tell her that it’s alright that she ran away and made us comb the woods for her _for four goddamned hours_!”

This last part is _screamed_ so loudly, even Ben winces. 

“Luke, please -” Leia interjects but her brother only aims his furious gaze on her, effectively silencing her from speech. 

“I told you earlier that I am done with this dramatic bullshit. And I meant it.” He turns back to Rey before anyone else can get a word in and his daughter flinches away from him. “Are you happy now? You’re the centre of attention - _again_. Running off into the woods in the middle of fucking winter. We had to call the state troopers in for you, so no missy, you don’t get to go off upstairs and pout in your bedroom. You could have ended up in a _ditch_ somewhere and we would have never found you!”

“Like you give a shit,” Rey whispers to her father. She is leaning against the doorway to the hallway going upstairs, her arms crossed and tears shining in her eyes. She doesn’t look afraid anymore, though. 

She looks _pissed_. 

Ben cannot decide if he is horrified, or impressed. Probably a bit of both.

“ _Rey_!” Leia admonishes sharply. 

Luke slams his hand against the counter, but Rey does not give him the chance to say anything else. She pushes off the wall and approaches him, and Ben - he wants to call her back, to tell her to _stop_ but later on, he does not think anything he could have said would have prevented what was going to happen. 

It is far too late for any of it. Years too late. 

“It’s the truth,” Rey replies without looking at Leia. She stands before her father and then she is crying, but not enough to distort her words or the trembling fury in her voice. “He’s only pissed because I disrupted his afternoon of getting shit-faced in front of the television. I guess the squeaky wheel always does get the grease.”

Ben would like to think he sees it coming. That he crosses the room before it can happen, that he finds a way to insert himself between Rey and his uncle. But he didn’t see it coming. Not that. Not by a mile. 

The _crack_ that fills the kitchen is somehow louder than the shattered bottle. 

It is like an explosion, only rather than debris scattering across the room, something far more vital falls apart in front of them. Rey’s head snaps to the side, her hair flying in a beautiful, graceful arc of auburn and chestnut. Luke does not lower his hand right away, where his gold wedding band twinkles under the kitchen lights. A look of surprise comes across his face, like he had not known he was going to do it either. Like he is just as shocked and horrified as everyone else in that kitchen. The scent of beer becomes overwhelming, like a fugue of old regrets. Leia’s hands fly up to her cheeks and a small, horrified sound leaves her lips. 

Ben experiences a mysterious numbness. It spreads across his body, a creeping tide that is far beyond the realms of normal anger. 

His brain does not understand what he just saw. Not at first. There is only that numbness - brief, for the span for perhaps a handful of seconds. It starts in his chest and quickly overrides everything else, like he was the one lost in that forest all day. Without a compass, without a tether to the world. Only then, the numbness is quickly followed by _heat_ and uncontrollable shaking. His winter jacket suddenly feels a thousand pounds too heavy and his boots like anchored weights. A long, shivering breath leaves him, from deep in his lungs. 

It is just a _blink,_ just a fucking _blink_ of an eye, and suddenly he has crossed the kitchen, his hand is gripping the back of Luke’s shirt, right on the collar, and then he is not just moving his uncle out of the way, but _throwing_ him. 

Someone screams his name, he thinks. Maybe. Maybe it is just the ringing in his ears because he does not hear Luke collide into the barstools lining the side of the island, does not hear his mother shouting, does not really even know who or where he is. 

He just sees Rey. 

She raises a trembling hand to her cheek. A red handprint is already blooming there, along the freckles and beauty marks on her skin. A single teardrop falls from her right eye, magnifying all that bruising red for one precious second. She says something and before the sounds of the world return to him, he looks at her lips and realizes she is saying a word he knows. 

_Ben._

His name. 

He does not really think about much of anything when he scoops her up in his arms, angling himself so he does not accidentally hit her off of the doorway. Hands twist in his shirt and soon he feels tears, hot and wet, soaking in his skin. Her bone-rattling sobs fill his ears, her face tucked into his chest. He does not pause to look back at his mother or his uncle. 

Ben carries Rey upstairs, up and away from the Greek tragedy that is their family. Up and away from all that can hurt her. 

*

Why did he think he could save her when he was just going to go and break her heart all over again? Did he fashion himself a white knight all these years, watching out for her where no one else would?

Who the fuck was he trying to kid?

Ben sits on the beach alone. There is no one out today and he is glad for that. He can watch the Pacific roll in, watch it in perfect miserable silence, and wonder how he is going to face Rey again. Because he has to go back, at some point. 

And he doesn't just mean to the cabin. 

They have to go back to the real world. To their family, as broken as it is. To their jobs and their lives and… She deserves so much more than he could ever give her. How could he ask her to hide everything and still expect everything to turn out all right? To expect her to just be happy with that, while they live their secret lives, playing the guitar and painting and fucking and making love and - all of it. 

He knows they are the same, at least in some ways. They both like the same music, the same movies. They both love to sing in the car and they secretly love spaghetti westerns. Although it took him some time to accept, he knows they are the same in other ways too. He likes to be in control and she likes to give it to him, even though they both know she can take it away any time she wants. He likes to come inside her, as deep as he can, and she likes for him to do it because that is when they are the closest. All tied up in each other, everywhere, all over. 

The ways they are different - why, it still makes sense between them. They fill in each other’s edges, each other’s fault lines, and they exist together in all their defects and perfections. He can be a morose asshole and she can call him on it. She can be stubborn and he can be soft, gentle, understanding. She can be the strong one, everything he needs and could ever want. 

But what has he been to her? 

The ocean, rough with wind and waves, crashes to shore. Part of Ben wants to walk out into the sea and be swept away. He has always been a coward, though. Most of all, to himself. 

He hears her footsteps in the sand before he sees her. 

Ben closes his eyes and draws his knees up to his chin, folding his arms around himself like that might somehow protect him from what is to come. She stops at his side, sand brushing across his bare skin like a gentle kiss. Fingers wind in his hair, light and barely there. She smells like paint and cucumbers. Melon drop. Like home. 

“I’m sorry,” Ben says without opening his eyes. Tears fall down his long nose and dot the dark cotton of his pants. 

She falls to her knees beside him and when she gently, but firmly grasps his jaw and turns his head to face her, she isn’t smiling, or crying, or anything that he recognizes. There is a bright intensity to her eyes and he finds then that he cannot look away from her. Not for anything. 

“Is this it?” He cannot help but ask because he needs to know even if he already knows what the answer will be. What it should be. 

But his Rey, his sturdy little Rey, has always been full of surprises. And he really should have known better. 

“Fuck no,” she tells him with the beginnings of a smile. Her cheeks are dry and her eyes clear. Strong - she is always so _strong_. For both of them. 

Ben goes to speak but she is already shaking her head at him. She reaches out and when he looks down at the paint-splattered hand, at the hand she has used to cup his cheek, to brush across the high ridges of his cheekbones, to encircle his cock, to hold his hand and a million other things, he cannot think to do anything but take it. 

Small, fragile bones fold under his, tangling with his fingers and holding him tightly. 

“Let me ask you one question, Ben. And you have to tell the truth.” Her eyes are light and greenish today. Less hazel and closer to that blistering emerald shade he loves so dearly.

He does not trust himself to speak and only nods. 

Rey gazes out at the ocean and somehow, that small smile of hers only grows. She looks so beautiful right now, though he cannot tell her. Not right now, when it would just feel like a cheap excuse to avoid what they absolutely cannot avoid anymore. 

When she looks back at him, there is a glimmer in her eyes after all, but he does not see sadness there… and in the most secret of his hearts, he dares to hope. 

“Are you happy, Ben? I mean really happy.”

He flounders, absently wiping a stray tear from his face with a nudge of his shoulder. He grips her hand loosely, running a finger across her palm over and over again. 

Rey clarifies before he can even ask. “With your life. With work and where you’re living and - just - all of it. Are you honestly happy?”

Ben peers down at the sand as he thinks it over. It is not a question that he has ever taken the time to examine. At least, not in a very long time. He remembers the day Uncle Luke and his mother sat him down, over the winter holidays during his first year in the music program. They had told him, kindly and benevolently, that he knew just as well as they did that he was wasting his time with the fine arts. 

_What will you do for money?_ Luke had asked him, ever the pragmatic one in the family. 

And after years of battling against the age-old Organa tradition, he had lost that fight. Had buckled and given in to their well-meaning, albeit overbearing advice. Because they were right - a musician does not make a lot of money. They starve more times than not or have to take a shitty day job, where they are ground down to a pulp and can barely muster the energy to focus on what they truly love. 

He still has most of his inheritance from Han tucked away in a savings account, but for what? He doesn’t like the condo he lives in. He hates living in California, where it is too hot and there is too much traffic. He does not want a big flashy sports car when the one he has is pretty much perfect as is, and he does not want to live in a giant mc-mansion, nor buy a membership to the country clubs. He hates that high society bullshit, always has. 

And while he does not hate practising medicine, not by a long shot, he does not love it either. 

“No.” The admission feels seamless to him once he has said it. Something that he has carried with him for years now, like a rock in his shoe, and only now that he has taken it out, polished it up and really evaluated the truth does he realize just how much he means it. “No, I’m not happy.”

“No,” Rey echoes quietly, nodding her head in agreement. “Me either.”

The ocean waves seem quiet, the biting chill of the wind to lessen. All senses dim down until all he can focus on is Rey and the curiously fast patter of his own heart. That kernel of hope has changed, suddenly. The world does not feel quite as oppressive and inescapable as it did a moment ago - the world, as in that place out there. Down the road they drove over yesterday to get to this cabin, or maybe they were just fleeing down it. Up and away from all the troubles of a world in which Ben feels he has never really had a place in. 

Rey smiles at him again and his heart - it _stutters_ with it because she can see it in his eyes. That slow, dawning comprehension. 

“But…” Ben trails off, swallows thickly, and then tries again. “But we can’t, Rey. I mean, we have -”

“Shit,” Rey interrupts him. He rears back a little, but she nods like he disagreed with her out loud. “It’s shit, Ben. That’s what we have outside of that cabin. Why would we want to go back to it?”

“Are you saying that we what - run away?” Ben wants to sound incredulous. He wants to sound rational and authoritative, like the adult he is. Instead, that blooming bud of hope has begun to expand so rapidly he can barely catch his breath. As soon as the words have left his mouth, they make complete sense to him. 

_Ba-da-boom_ his heart goes, harder and faster. 

Rey must feel him trembling because she scoots closer to him, her grasp of his hand tightening like they are on a gangplank together and she is the only thing preventing him from falling into an endless black abyss. She kneels so their eyes are level and with unnerving steadiness she tells him, “Not away, Ben but towards something. If we stay here, we know exactly what will happen. And I’m not just talking about us. Everything we have ever wanted - to paint, to make music - or anything else that might come from that, it will fade away. I realized it earlier, when you were playing. It was the first time I had seen you take out your guitar in Christ - _years_ Ben. And playing makes you happy. I know it does.”

She presses even closer until their faces are inches apart. Her lips are soft and pink and he wants to kiss her, but it is not the right time. What she is saying - he needs to hear it. It might be the most important moment in his life right now and for once, he is totally present for it. Totally aware. 

While that might terrify him, he cannot deny that it exhilarates him in equal measure. 

“And this,” Rey says with the slightest quiver to her voice. Tears spill over after all and Ben makes a small pained sound, leaning over to use his other hand to wipe them away. She closes her eyes the moment he touches her, their foreheads pressed together and hands clasped tight. “This makes us happy too. We can’t let go of that Ben. _I_ can’t. Not again.”

She pulls her hand out of his, only to throw her arms around his neck and hold him close. Then they are crying into each other’s hair, shaking and gasping for breath, only for Ben, he does not cry for misery or pain. He weeps for all that potential lying at their feet. 

“I can’t either,” he confesses to her, voice throaty with raw and naked need. His thoughts spin and he knows what it all will mean, but he cannot fully grasp it yet. Eagerness, panic, hope - they all pull at his insides until he reaches for the only thing that will calm him and steady him for what is still to come. He begins kissing all the exposed skin he can; her shoulders, her neck and throat, her cheeks. 

Her lips. 

And Rey kisses him back. She kisses him back and _fuck_ , it is just like the first time all over again. Only now there are no pretences. No addendums, no uncrossable boundaries. 

Together they sit in the wet sand of the Pacific, lips tugging and pulling together and when Rey whispers all rough and deep, “Take me back to the cabin, Ben”, it takes him no effort at all to scoop her up in his arms and wade them through the sand, back down the trails of separate footpaths they had taken to the beach, only for one pathway to be carved on the way back.


	13. Just Like Honey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She wonders when it happened; this contentment they have made for themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU EVERYONE!!!! 
> 
> I can't believe this story has come to an end. This fic started out as pure trashy porn - and while it is still most certainly in that category - a whole heap of plot came along and took me completely by surprise. This story is really near and dear to my heart and I am so blessed by all your comments and support. Special callout to fleetmoodmac - you really blow me away with all your lovely and inspiring comments. Thank you to all!!!! 
> 
> I am also happy to announce that I have found a job! Woot! Sadly, this means updates will be slowing down on my other WIPs, but that does not mean I am going anywhere. I am going to aim for weekly updates and we'll go from there. 
> 
> I just finished this chapter today so there will definitely be some grammatical errors. Bear with me - I will correct these later. I start the new job this week and my goal this weekend was to get this done and sent out to you all. 
> 
> Enjoy darlings! <3

She is warm in this memory. Warm and safe. 

Rey is not sure when she fell asleep, curled up and sobbing in Ben’s arms. Her face feels a little sore where Luke struck her, her eyes swollen and her nose stuffy. The terrible gnawing cold has left her extremities at least and she basks in the quiet calm of the room. 

Ben lies on his back next to her and she can tell from his breathing that he is still asleep. 

Earlier, hours and hours ago, after Ben had managed to calm her down enough to let him get some ice for her cheek, she had sat in this very room and wondered for a short while if it would have been better if she had stayed lost out there in the woods. Of course, she did not really believe that - not after the terror of spending most of the day lost in a cold, forest - but a part of her wondered if that might have been easier than dealing with the fallout of her horrible mistake. 

Once, when Rey was nine years old, her father had swatted her butt for almost running into traffic. That, as far as she can recall, is the only time her father has put his hands on her in anger. He yelled and slammed things, and left the house to cool off - but he never hit her. Never. 

She knows she was wrong to leave. That she scared the living daylights out of everyone, especially Ben. She feels bad about it, even if there is a small, nasty part of her that delighted in how much they worried for her. That they had shown some sign that they cared, at all. 

But that had all been quickly drowned out the moment her father slapped her across the face. 

Maybe she had it coming. The things she had said - she has never spoken to her father like that before. But she is not sorry - not even when she sat on the bed and listened as Leia quietly told Ben that she had called her and Luke an Uber and that they were going to go home early. Ben could use Luke’s car to bring him and Rey home tomorrow. 

“He needs time,” Leia said to Ben. 

“He needs to pull his head out of his ass,” Ben had replied immediately. But he had spoken quietly too and she recognized the guilt in his voice. 

If her father had surprised her by slapping her, then she does not even know the word to describe Ben’s reaction directly afterwards. How he had thrown Luke across the kitchen like a sack of potatoes, with that awful enraged look in his eyes…

Rey feels worse about that than anything else, like she was the one who threw her father, not Ben. That it was all her fault somehow. She should have never run away. She should have never gone to Ben’s house that night in November, should have never told him off for something that really was not his fault. They’re not together - they’re _cousins_ for crying out loud - so of course he will date and sleep with other women. She could have talked this all out with Ben, but they never really gave each other the chance to do that either. 

But then, before Rey’s thoughts could spiral further out of control, Ben had returned to the room with a bag of frozen peas and this look on his face. A look she could not begin to decipher. She wondered if her guilt was written in the sheen to her eyes and the slow tears dripping down her chin. 

“I’m sorry.”

And somehow she had known that Ben understood she was not speaking about just this horrible day, but about everything. She could see it in the dark depths of his eyes, that churning, somber regard. 

He shifted on his feet, glancing away from her to chew on his lip. 

_Please don’t leave,_ she wanted to beg him, but she knew she never would say those words out loud. 

Ben surprised her by closing the door and crossing the room to stand before her. She looked up at him, up and up because he is so damned tall, and she could see the decision in his face; a look that was much like what someone might have if they had just decided to jump from a plane with a faulty parachute and resigned themselves to their uncertain fate. 

_Fuck, shit, fine,_ that expression told her.

Rey found she agreed with the look. 

“Let’s lay down for a bit,” Ben had said to her. 

And so, sometime later, they had fallen asleep, curled around each other just like when they were little. In that blissful silence, after Leia and Luke left and the cottage descended into tranquillity, Rey began to wonder if Ben had done what he did to Luke for a reason beyond simple anger; the way he had reacted, it was like it had not even been a consideration for him to throw Luke away from her. She had never seen Ben like that before, so out of control with rage, so unrecognizable that even when she said his name, he seemed not to hear her right away. 

Rey turns her head to look at Ben’s sleeping profile. At the long nose, the black wisps of untameable hair, the high cheekbones and long eyelashes. 

_I think I am in love with you_ , she thinks at him and for now, for just this moment in time, she feels safe with that revelation. There is no guilt, no anxiety, or regret. 

It is just the simple, honest truth. 

She wants him. She wants to _be_ with him the way he was with that woman. She wants him to rasp commands at her in that darkened tone, to hold her in place as he has his way with her body. To whisper _sweetheart_ into her ear, to lick the sweat from her skin and call her his own. 

Rey reaches out before she can think not to and traces a finger across the bridge of his nose, to the peaks of his cheeks. Soft and feather-light. Ben makes a small sound in his sleep, shifting minutely under her touch. She smiles a little and goes to pull her hand away when he murmurs under his breath. He sounds forlorn, dejected. Needful. 

And every muscle in Rey’s body locks together as she _stares_ at him in open shock. 

“ _Rey,_ ” he whispers in his sleep, eyebrows drawing together like he is in pain or… in something else entirely. It is similar to the face he made with that woman, that pained expression that was not really pained at all. “ _Rey,_ ” he murmurs again, and shifts until he is laying on his side, facing her. 

And then Rey remembers something else. 

When she had watched him with that woman all those months ago, right before she left to storm downstairs and thereby start a chain of events that led them to this very moment, he had said something that she dismissed at the time. 

She recalls it now, in startling clarity. 

_I’ll give you everything you need, sweetheart. Fuck, r-_

Had he… had he been about to say her name that day? Could that be possible?

Her heart beats a little faster. She shifts to regard Ben more carefully, like she might be able to intuit the truth in the beauty marks dotting his skin. He has never once given her any indication that he might feel the same. Just the opposite, in fact, but…

Then - she remembers something _else._

The last time Ben came over to her house, when he overheard her and quickly vacated the premises - even remembering it now, Rey blushes with humiliation and has to look away from him. She knows it had been him in the house that day. That he had heard her saying his name - amongst other things. 

Choosing to bypass the embarrassing parts of that memory, she focuses on the part that has given her pause now. Had the front door opened before or after she had gotten well into her _activities_? Had Ben come up the stairs as she was - _finishing_ , for lack of a better word - or before then? Had he heard her and then _lingered,_ as she had done when she walked in his house only the week before to discover him with that woman. 

She does not dare to call the rising feeling in her excitement. Not after the events of this day. 

But she cannot deny the growing need within her, a building warmth in between her legs that only grows hotter with each passing second. The most naughty question of all occurs to her and she has to shift her thighs to vent out some of this feeling inside her.

Had he heard her that day and _liked_ it? Had he gone home afterwards and done the same? Touched himself, thought about her…

And come to her?

Rey shifts her thighs and chances a quick glance at him. He is still sleeping and she doesn’t feel like getting up to take care of herself in the bathroom. She is certainly not going to go into Leia or Luke’s room, even if they left hours ago. She’s warm and comfortable here and…

She doesn’t _want_ to leave. She wants to stay right here, in bed with Ben. He’s asleep and she can be quiet… 

She reaches down for the button of her jeans and then stops herself. She feels wild and a little crazy. Impulsive with want. He would never know. Even though it’s probably more than a little creepy and even though she is not _sure_ of anything, there is an instinct within her, a tickle of knowing, that perhaps she is not the only one suffering right now. 

He said her name in his sleep and she is pretty sure he almost said it with that woman too. In the exact same way, with the same measure of need. 

As the room is engulfed with the darkness of night and a cold, northern wind howls over the cottage, Rey unbuttons her pants and slips her fingers down to the molten dewiness between her legs. She spent the day lost and scared in the woods. She spent the day cursing the Organa family name and every moment that led her to this true cluster-fuck of a day. 

Now, she does not want to be anywhere else. 

She crooks her fingers, slipping one inside and rubbing against the heel of her hand. She barely suppresses a moan - because what is the point? If she did not want Ben to hear her, to find her like this, she would have left the room. And when she hears Ben’s long, low exhale she knows it is too late to turn back anyway. 

He is awake. 

*

They barely make it through the door to the cabin before they fall on the floor of the living room together in a tangle of limbs and heady kisses. 

His hands are on her hips, her breasts, her jaw. Her fingers tangle in his hair, his breath in her lungs. She licks into his mouth and sucks on his plush bottom lip, nibbling to his approved moans and grunts. Her heart is a beast in her chest, filled with renewed need and purpose. She is no longer afraid of the future, no longer terrified of what lays outside this cabin. Everything she needs is right here, in her arms, wrapped around her and kissing her lovely. 

Ben manages to press a hand between them, shakily unhooking her pants and yanking them down her knees with her panties. She pulls his hair, making needy noises against his lips as they frantically kiss one another. Kicking off her pants, she automatically spreads her legs to accommodate him, breaking away from his mouth to keen when he rubs against her core. The fabric of his jeans is rough, but she doesn’t care. Soon enough, she is fumbling with his belt, and then he is helping her, tearing through his layers quickly. 

She gets her shirt off just as he comes back to her, naked skin flush against naked skin. She can feel his heart thudding in his chest and when he positions himself against her entrance, she pauses long enough to trace a finger along the crest of his cheeks. She can taste the salt of their combined tears in her mouth and as he begins the first press inside her, his length hot and hard within her slick channel, she pulls him down so they are pressed together all over. 

“Ask me again,” Ben rasps into her ear before pressing light, fluttering kisses into her throat and jaw. 

One day, she hopes, he won’t need these reassurances. He will just know that when she says something, she means it. Or maybe it was never really about that. Maybe he just likes to hear it again, to relive these small, heady moments. To know that this is real, that she is his and he is hers, and that they are finally getting this right. 

*

In this memory, she is on fire. 

Ben has not spoken since she realized he was awake. He lays next to her on his back, each of them looking at the shadow-strewn ceiling and anywhere but at each other. 

But she has not removed her hand either. 

Surely, he can see what she is doing. The blankets are pooled around her thighs and her pants clearly undone, her hand an obvious bulge in her underwear. She waits for a second, thinking over what to say, what to _do_ , when she suddenly decides she doesn’t want to think anymore. There is a light bruise on her cheek and her skin is still sensitive from her chilly pilgrimage today - she just wants it all to fall away. The games, the pretending. The anger and sadness she has been carrying with her for weeks now. 

She wants to let it go. 

So, Rey takes a small breath, really just a hitch of air, and starts moving her finger. 

Ben’s hand appears out of nowhere and grabs her wrist in a tight grasp, stopping her. She thinks she should feel embarrassed. Apologetic. Sheepish.

She feels none of these things. 

“It’s okay,” Rey whispers in the darkness of that bedroom. 

A deep sound starts in Ben’s chest and then he says, in a voice so strained that Rey almost starts moving again in spite of him, “It’s not.”

She waits for him to pull her hand out of her pants. She waits for him to leave the room, to return to all their awkwardness from before. She waits and waits, but he does not move her hand, or get up to leave. He just goes on holding her wrist, only now…

He is trembling. She can feel it, from where he lays next to her in the bed, and also in his grasp of her. 

“It is,” Rey tells him and when she starts to move her fingers again he doesn’t stop her. 

*

“Leave with me,” Rey whispers in Ben’s ear and to say it out loud, so explicitly, is its own kind of freedom. She moans brokenly when he suddenly loses patience and thrusts _hard,_ sliding in to the hilt. 

He touches her hair, her face, her lips. 

And they just stay like for a moment, tied up together. 

*

In this memory, she is sensation and blistering pleasure. 

At first, he says nothing. He just lies next to her and she can feel him watching her hand move beneath his loose grasp. She blushes, then with determination, she uses her free hand to pull his hand down until his fingers close over where hers are moving feverishly in her pants. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, so quietly she almost doubts she heard anything. 

Then, she hears a zipper. 

She turns to him automatically, watching the deep, pained breaths he is taking. His eyes are glued to their hands, to where she moves beneath his grasp. His hand is barely holding hers at all; more just laying over her skin, as though to simply feel the way she moves without participating himself. 

Rey takes a staggered breath, her eyes fluttering when her cunt gives a squeezing contraction under her fingers. A new sound fills the room and when she glances back at Ben she sees that his lips are parted and his eyes are lidded, still glued to what she is doing to herself. 

Then, she looks down. 

He is… large. Quite large. This does not surprise her in the least. Ben is a large man in general and for his cock to be… It is everything she wanted it to be and more. She can see it very well in the dark - just a long, thick shadow that bobs up and down with the rough, slapping movements of his hand. 

Rey moans as she watches him stroke himself hard, his hand coming up to gather the moisture from the head and then bringing it down to slick himself up. Without thinking, she takes her hand off the one she placed over hers and reaches for him. 

He freezes up, but she doesn’t give him time to think about it. She does not touch his cock directly, just as he is not touching her clit directly. She simply rests her hand over Ben’s in the same loose grip he has of her. 

He swallows thickly - she can hear the sound of his throat clicking. 

Then he begins to move again and when Rey moans in response, he grunts, low and deep. They move together, rubbing and tugging and pulsing towards their own ends. 

Later on, Ben will tell her that they can’t and her heart will be broken anew. But that will be before they realize a solemn truth - a truth that they do not bother to hide from, here and now in this moment. 

This feels right. 

Her fingers slick with her own juices, her hips moving in tiny thrusts the closer she gets to the end, keening moans clogged up in her throat - and the way Ben’s squeezes her hand when she is about to come because he is too. She feels it through his hand, the way his cock throbs in his grasp - in _their_ grasp. 

And their collective moans when the end comes crashing down, in the exact same breath. 

This feels right and that might be wrong on paper. That might make them criminals, or morally ambiguous, but none of that matters. Not here and now, when their hearts are so tied up together, it is impossible to say where either of them begins or ends. 

Two years later, Rey wishes she could tell that younger version of herself that everything will be okay. That sometimes, it takes love time to fully reveal itself. That all the shame and bullshit do not matter, that they just fall away when they are together. 

But some truths are just meant to be learned the hard way. 

*

Ben leans up far enough so they can look at each other and in his eyes she sees none of the scared man from before. The pine walls of the cabin loom above them, so startlingly similar to the family cottage that Rey experiences a sense of vertigo. 

_It was all worth it,_ she thinks to herself. _The tears, the heartache, the fucking misery and suffering - all worth it to come to this moment. Right here._

She knows without a doubt in her mind that this is absolutely true. 

Above her, Ben looks just as resolute as she feels, incandescent with happiness. Eyes light and skin sweaty and flushed. 

“Where will we go?” he whispers to her, cords standing out in his neck from the effort of staying still. 

“Anywhere we want, Ben.” She traces his cheekbones again and this time he captures her lips in a searing kiss, but he does not let her enter his mouth. He claims her, dominating her with lips and tongue, and she takes it, panting into him and desperately squirming her hips to get more friction. “Please - please move. I need...oh I need…”

He pulls away only the distance of a hair to rasp against her lips, “Please what?”

Rey’s breath catches in her throat. 

“Please daddy.”

He makes a gruff sound, somewhere between a groan and growl, and when he withdraws from her quivering cunt, only to _slam_ his hips back into her, it does not take them long at all to find that sweet, filthy oblivion they share together. 

*

They take turns grabbing each other’s hand on the drive home, as though the sudden thrill of eagerness, excitement and anxiety becomes just too much and they need to anchor one another to the moment. 

Hasty calls have been made to a realtor for Ben’s condo. Resignation letters have been sent off to both their employers. Ben made a call to his bank to move his savings around. Without any prompting whatsoever, he had turned his phone over to her to show her the money he had in his account. They’re sitting in a Wendy’s just off the highway and Rey is pretty certain her eyes bug out of her head. 

“Holy… you’re certainly a lot better with your money than I am with mine.” 

“I’ll teach you how to budget. It’s easier than you think.”

Rey gives Ben his phone back and studies him while he fiddles around with his banking app. There is a light smile on his face - it has been there all day, since they left the cabin this morning and made their way back into the city. 

“You know… I appreciate you showing me, but I hope you don’t think you have to.” Ben pauses and looks up at her, lowering his phone to the table next to their uneaten food. They are both far too antsy to eat, but the effort was there. “It’s your money, Ben. Wherever we end up - I’ll get a job. I’ll pull my weight -”

He leans over and gives her a quick kiss. She closes her eyes, exhaling sharply, but he pulls away before she can deepen it. 

“My money is your money now, sweetheart. I don’t want to hide anything from you.” He smiles at her again and fuck, something really has to be done about what just his damned _smile_ does to her heart. “As for the job, one thing at a time. We’re alright for money, let’s just… see where the road takes us.”

Rey smiles a little incredulously at him. “Who are you and what have you done with Benjamin Organa?”

“I’m happy,” Ben replies without missing a beat. He grabs a french fry and bops her nose with it. “For the first time in a long fucking time.”

She has to kiss him again for that. She _has_ to. 

Soon, they’re out on the road again, peeling down the highway and listening to the radio. There are a million thoughts in her head, a million ideas of where they could go. They’ve already discussed that they’ll only pack light. Essentials only. Ben will send the rest of his things to storage and Rey’s things…

She has already considered this part. She doesn’t like to - she doesn’t even know where to possibly begin with it. It is the only thing casting a black shadow over everything. The only kernel of dread she feels. 

Her father.

How in the world is she ever going to explain this to him?

*

They go to Ben’s first and then stop at Rey’s house. 

As always, Luke is not home. Ben gives her privacy to pack, telling her that he is going to call his mother. She can feel the same apprehension from him, though when she asks him how he thinks Leia will take it, he only offers her a cryptic statement. 

“Not as bad as you might think.”

Then he disappears outside to the backyard. 

Rey hovers by the staircase and looks up, towards the gaudy crystal chandelier her mother picked out over three decades ago. Another relic from a dead age. She packs clothes, a little bit of jewelry, her passport and other documents, and then pauses by her dresser. 

A photo of her mother sits on her nightstand. She is young, a little older than Rey’s age now. She takes the photo of the frame and silently puts it in her pack. 

Rey regards her bedroom with a strange sense of calm that she did not remotely feel upon entering. Her bed is neatly made. Her art hanging up around the room. This is the room she loved Ben in. The room she ran away to whenever she and Luke fought, the room she slept in, cried in, and about a million other things.

She feels no attachment to it now. 

Should that be strange, or wrong, to find it so easy to give up this place? She does not really think so. There are too many ghosts in these walls, but the one that has been hardest to let go in the younger version of herself. The one who wallowed in pain and misery, who dared to give up on the only thing that has ever brought her joy. 

That is all she needs to take with her now. 

She leaves the door open when she leaves. 

*

Ben is still outside when she comes downstairs. She can hear his voice through the patio door, low and even. She peeks outside and finds him on the deck, looking down at the deck as he speaks. He does not look upset, or angry. He just nods at whatever his mother is saying to him and then speaks some more. 

Rey closes the curtain and leaves him to his privacy. 

She wanders into the sitting room and gazes at all that furniture they were never allowed to use. Then she goes to the dining room. A notepad sits on the table. The pages are blank, though she can see the impression of words Luke has written there. His little leavings for her. 

She runs her finger over the light blue paper and grabs the pen with a decisiveness she has only just decided on. 

Ten minutes later, she is putting the pen down just as Ben comes in and closes the patio door behind him. 

They stare at each other from across the room, not quite smiling, not quite certain in their bones. 

It is Rey who asks, “Ready?”

Ben walks to her, folding her in his arms and pressing a kiss to her temple. His answered “yes” is little more than air against her skin and she hides a relieved smile in his shirt. They breathe each other in and then he takes her hand to lead her out of the dining room, out of the house and into The Falcon. 

The engine roars to life and then they are pulling out of the driveway, and into the open air of the highway. 

Ben turns to Rey with a small smile. 

“Do you want to go to the ocean, or keep driving?”

She kicks off her shoes and puts her feet up on the dashboard. Her fingers wind with his and she is many things then, but most of all she is just content. 

“Let’s keep going.”

  
  
  


**Eight Years Later**

Fall, Rey has discovered, is her favourite season. 

She never got to truly experience it in California. There was only hot and dry, and hot and wet, and the rare blip of winter. Colorado has a whole host of things she has never seen before. Snow - true snow. The kind that she always found to be desolately romantic. She still finds it lovely, though the shine wears off quickly when you have to dig your car out of ten feet of snow. There are mountains here, in Boulder. The Rockies. Large, beautiful and a little terrifying. She cannot imagine a horizon without them, anymore. 

It has only been five years since they moved here, but nothing really beats it. Not the Atlantic coastline in Brooklyn, where they stayed for only a year before Ben tired of the traffic, not in Florida where Rey tired of the hurricane season and perpetual small-town ignorance. Not in Toronto, with the beautiful Great Lakes, or overly polite Canadians, where they lived for seven months after Rey got a studio contract. It was too cold in Toronto and just another big city that Ben ended up loathing. 

So they came to Boulder, where they had all the snow and mountains they could ever want. They had seasons, too. Spring, a brief spat of summer. An overly long winter that Ben secretly loved but would never admit to. 

And fall, of course. 

Rey pauses in her painting to regard the world outside her studio window. All autumn red and burnished orange. She smiles a little, reminiscing about when they first moved here. 

The house they bought is small. A post-war home they flipped to be more modern. They did it together; Ben did almost all of the carpentry and electricity, while Rey painted and restained the floors. It took them a year, but they finished the house. It's perfect. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a cozy living room, a kitchen they barely use since they’re both lazy asses and hate cooking, and a small studio Ben made for her at the back of the house where the sunroom used to be. 

He is a contractor now. More of a carpenter really and a successful one at that. It was something he had not seen coming, but Rey had not been surprised at all when the business took off. He is good with his hands, whether it is strumming a guitar on Friday nights at the Lounge downtown, suturing wounds, or crafting beautiful furniture pieces. The man can do anything he puts his mind to, really. 

They’re not overly well-off, nor are they poor. Somewhere neatly in the low-to-middle class, she supposes. Comfortable enough to order out often and still pay the mortgage. She bought a used station wagon a few years ago and when she has to go out to art shows, that is what she takes. The Falcon is parked in the garage now, put away for the cooler months. Ben has a white cube van that Rey fondly anointed as the “pedo-mobile”, but it works well for his job. 

She wonders when it happened; this contentment they have made for themselves. 

For a long moment, she looks out the window, but it is not the mountains she sees. She closes her eyes, smells a ghost of cedar, and then her smile widens. 

Downstairs, the front door closes and she hears Ben singing under his breath as he walks into the house. Beaming, she plops her paintbrush in her jar of water, wipes her hands on her apron and then bounds downstairs. 

It doesn’t really matter anymore when it happened, she realizes. Just that it did. 

*

They’re halfway through _The Empire Strikes Back_ , a bowl of popcorn on the table that is three-quarters of the way empty, when Ben picks up his phone and abruptly pauses the streaming. 

Rey turns to him with a look of deepest betrayal. They were just getting to the scene when Yoda demonstrates to his young, frustrated padawan that there is no object unmovable by the force - not even a spacecraft. It doesn’t matter that they’ve seen this movie a billion times and can recite every single line by heart - no one puts Yoda on pause. 

But before Rey can ask Ben just what the hell he thinks he is doing, she catches the fold of his lips and the somber cast of his eyes and her words die on her tongue. His hand is on her leg, though she can’t tell if this is a comforting gesture, or a braceful one.

Either way, she is immediately on edge.

There are only two things that could have possibly made Ben stop one of their all-time favourite films at such a pivotal scene, with that loaded expression on his face to boot. 

The last time he looked like this, he had begged her to move back to the States from Toronto. She somehow doubts that he is going to ask that they move cities again, which leaves her with the only other option. 

“I spoke with my mother today.”

 _Yahtzee,_ Rey thinks to herself, though she does not find anything remotely amusing about this topic. She breaks eye contact with Ben almost immediately and picks up the bowl of popcorn for something else to do. 

“Okay.”

Already, she can feel Ben giving her the same look he gives her when she pouts over something stupid. She wants to get angry in that moment. Lash out at the way he makes light of her ire, even though he is really not doing that at all. She and Ben don’t fight often. Sure, they argue here and there, but that almost always turns into sex. 

She doesn’t want to argue now. After all these years, she knows how hard this is for him. That he has to shoulder not only his own residual guilt and resentment towards their parents, but hers as well. That is what they do for each other. Quietly carrying each other over those treacherous uphill battles. 

And the past is always such a bitch of a mountain to climb, isn’t it?

Gentle fingertips press into her chin, lifting her head up and turning it back towards him, at the same time that he takes the popcorn bowl and puts it on the coffee table. He carved that coffee table for her twenty-sixth birthday last year. She peers at it stubbornly for a moment before taking a deep breath and finally returning her gaze to him. 

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say,” he tells her quietly. A gentle admonishment, compared to the much more feverish and impassioned ones he gives her in their bedroom. Usually at her request. 

“Yes I do.” 

Only a moment ago, Rey was happily watching one of her favourite movies and now there is a pall of dread settling over her weary bones. She suddenly feels exhausted. Spent. She takes Ben’s hand in her own and kisses the back of it before affixing him with a look of her own - one that is well branded to her own exasperation with him at times, that says to him _do you think I was born yesterday, you galoot?_

“If it was just your mom saying hi, or asking when to come for Christmas dinner, you wouldn’t have paused the movie.”

“What?” 

Ben only says that when he is floundering and has nothing left to come back at her with. She prides herself on reducing this ridiculous genius man of hers to single syllable words - usually, anyways. Right now she would rather they avoid this topic altogether because she knows what he is going to tell her. The same thing he has told her every November 1st for the last eight years. 

“Come on, Ben. The X-Wing scene? Really? You would have never stopped during that part unless you accidentally ran over one of the neighbours with your car, _or_ if this about my father.” She raises her eyebrows at him for good measure, waiting to see if he will deny it. 

He glances away from her, disgruntled in only that onerously adorable way he can pull off, before he mutters, “Touche.”

Rey suddenly feels bad. 

Ben has always been the way to field these calls, to ask his mother the same question every time the holidays roll around, only to receive the same answer. Rey never asked him to do this - in fact, this is one of the few topics they have argued about in the past. But he does it anyway, likely because of the unspoken pain that Rey carries with her each and every day. 

Because there are two ghosts that follow her around now. They might not have a pretentious sitting room that has no other function other than to serve as a tomb to a woman who has been dead for many years, but those ghosts do not really go away. They are fretful, quaking things that rattle in their cages. That pull Rey's gaze towards the head of the table during Christmas dinner, to where her father would have been sitting if he could pull his head out of his ass long enough to stop blaming her for every bad thing that has ever befallen him. 

Ben sees that long, thousand-yard stare in her eyes when she thinks no one else is looking. Every single time. And so, every year on November 1st, he makes the call to his mother. She wishes he wouldn’t, if only to save themselves the heartache of it all. 

_You don’t have to do this anymore, Ben. We should just…_

_Just what?_

_Let it go. Clearly he has._

Yes, they have had many arguments on the subject, many tears shed. Once, after a particularly harrowing afternoon of yelling at each other over a _particularly_ disastrous call in which Luke had somehow accidentally answered Leia’s cell (though Rey very much doubts that was an accident on Luke’s part and more of a drunken charade to reopen old wounds), Ben punched a hole in the wall. That had been a fun trip to the emergency room and god - afterward he wouldn’t stop apologizing. She knows why he had done it - he was not mad at her. And she was not really mad at him when she yelled at him for bothering to call at all and on it went, but somehow, no matter who they were actually angry with, they always ended up suffering for it regardless. 

So, she thinks now that she wants to make this a little easier on Ben. That is all that is within her control anymore. At least with this. 

“Baby,” she says softly. She cards a hand through his black locks - he trimmed his hair recently and while she misses the longer length, she loves him with any haircut. Facial hair, no facial hair - it doesn’t matter. He is always beautiful to her. “Look, I’m not upset with you. I just can’t help wondering why you bother.”

“I know.” He aims a distracted half-smile her way. “I ask myself that same question every year. Sometimes I think it would just be better to give up, but… I keep hoping things might change.”

“I guess I didn’t leave things in the best way.” She sighs again and then slumps over to lean her head on Ben’s shoulder. He puts his arm around her, the gesture as automatic as breathing. 

“You left things in the only way you could. Deep down, he knows that too.”

“You really think so?” She wants to sound sarcastic, but it just comes out tired. 

He squeezes her to him a little bit tighter and kisses her hair. “Yes, turkey. I think so.” 

Rey huffs a laugh and closes her eyes, listening to the steady, strong heartbeat under her cheek. Sometimes, this is the only way she can fall asleep at night; resting her head on Ben’s chest until she dozes off. 

“Just Leia again this year?” 

“Yeah… she said he’s not ready yet.”

 _That’s just about what I thought,_ Rey thinks but does not say. 

It doesn’t matter, though. Ben presses another kiss to her temple, wordlessly turns the movie on, and holds her close to him. Shouldering all the unsaid at their feet. 

*

She is at an art gallery when she faints. It happens very suddenly. Almost without warning. 

Rey is standing next to a curator at a very fancy unveiling of a new set of her pieces. Ben is off to the side as he usually is at these functions, chatting with the only other person he knows here. Armitage Hux, or Armie as Rey and Ben call him, is a fellow contractor. Like them, he is relatively new to Boulder. 

Rey mostly doesn’t mind Armie. He’s a little caustic sometimes and not the kind of person Ben would normally stand to be around but they’re practically BFFs. 

Rey smiles at Ben fleetingly. He grins back at her in that quietly loving way of his, dark eyes sparkling mischievously as he eyes the black gown clinging to her curves. She has a feeling he will be peeling this dress off of her the second they get home. In fact - 

The curator, some English chap named Dooku (though she is not entirely sure she heard his name right), says something to her. She thinks he is asking about her work, but as she turns back to him the world starts to spin. To _tilt_. She is reminded of a night from a long time ago, when she got into her father’s alcohol stash and drank almost an entire bottle of vodka. This feels a lot like that, but accelerated. 

The world turns, fading to black and her knees buckle and then - 

She is in the hospital. At least, that is where she is pretty sure she is. 

“...um, what ‘re we doin’…?” Rey goes to sit up and a bolt of pain lances across the back of her head. “ _Ow - oh sonofabitch_!”

Someone clears their throat just as a familiar hand presses gently on her shoulder to make her lie down again. The haziness of her vision passes and first she sees Ben sitting next to her. He looks pale and frightened, but that emotion is quickly tucked away before she can linger on it too long. 

Then, she notices the doctor, a tiny woman whose age is impossible to guess. 

“Hello, Ms. Organa. My name is Dr. Maz.” Dr. Maz smiles at her, politely ignoring the fact that Rey just cursed in her hospital room. “How are you feeling, dear? Any lightheadedness?”

“Why are we here, Ben?” She doesn’t mean to ignore the doctor, but her brain is still a little fuzzy and she doesn’t understand how she got to be in this bed. Though she is willing to bet it has something to do with the throbbing pain in her skull. 

“You fainted, Rey.” He rubs her wrist and she can tell that he has to bite his tongue to prevent himself from launching into Doctor Mode. He left that life behind him a long time ago, but the muscle memory is still there. 

“That’s right,” Dr. Maz says. She brings up Rey’s chart and clicks a pen open. “Why don’t you tell me how you’re feeling right now?”

“Um… my head hurts?” Rey replies. 

Ben does not even crack a tiny smile. 

“I bet it does.” Dr. Maz produces a small penlight from her pocket and proceeds to check Rey’s pupils. “Hmmm, your eyes are responding well to the light. You managed not to cut your head open either, but you will have a nasty bump there. We’ll send you to the radiology to get a quick x-ray, make sure there is no concussion.” Dr. Maz looks at her chart and then back up at her with a reassuring smile. “Now, what about earlier, at the party? Can you tell me how you were feeling before you fainted?” 

Rey thinks for a moment, frowning. She didn’t feel strange at all as far as she can recall. She tells Dr. Maz as much and keeps glancing at Ben, her frown deepening at the silent and tense way he holds himself. 

“Mhm, good. And what about heart conditions? Any history of fainting before?”

“No,” Rey answers immediately. 

“Alright. You probably didn’t eat enough, or have enough water to drink. These things happen.” Dr. Maz clicks her pen closed and then goes to leave to order Rey’s tests when she abruptly comes back to the room with a sheepish smile. “Sorry - almost forgot to ask. Any chance of pregnancy, Ms. Organa?”

“Um - no?” Rey laughs as she says this and then immediately regrets it when a smaller, but still quite painful bolt of pain goes through her head. Fuck, she really hit her head hard, didn’t she?

“She has an IUD,” Ben says, but he’s still looking at Rey like she might shatter apart the second he takes his eyes off of her. 

“Hm. Still, to be safe let’s take a urine sample. IUDs are not failsafe and fainting is a common sign of pregnancy.” 

Ben mutters under his breath, likely something to the effect that he knew that already, thank you very fucking much, but Dr. Maz is already walking out of the room.

When one of the nurses brings her a sample cup and Rey completes the same humiliating task that everyone has had to at some point in their lives, getting pee on her hands and cursing unhappily under her breath until the ordeal is over, Ben helps her back into bed and they await their results. 

He tells Rey what happened after the nurse leaves, how she suddenly collapsed and hit her head off a display table behind her. 

“You would have cracked your head open like a melon if I hadn’t reached you in time.” But he isn’t smiling when he says this. He looks so grim, so painfully solemn, that Rey reaches out to brush his cheek. 

“Hey,” she says quietly, with a searching look. “What is it?”

Ben shakes his head and runs a shaky hand through his hair. “I should have been paying more attention. You wouldn’t have hit your head at all if I had -”

“Woah, woah,” she says with a quelling glare. Ben purses his lips, but she perseveres. “No, Ben. Don’t blame yourself for this. It was an accident. How were you supposed to know I was about to pass out? Because I sure didn’t. You can’t take this on. Remember that time I fell off the ladder and broke my wrist?”

“Rey, there’s a big difference between you getting drunk on Armie’s homemade wine and stubbornly trying to staple Christmas lights to the eavestrough, then there is to this.” He studies for a long moment, eyes dark and assessing. “Are you sure you didn’t feel funny right before?”

“I’m sure,” she tells him right away. She thinks it over again and slowly shakes her head. “I mean - the only thing I can think of was that egg salad making me sick the other day. But I am pretty sure that was because of the eggs.”

Ben opens his mouth to say something, but what it is Rey never finds out. 

Dr. Maz returns and proceeds to say five little words that change their lives forever. 

“Ms. Organa, you are pregnant.”

*

“Green, or yellow?”

“Do you really want our baby staring at sun-fuck yellow for the early years of their development?”

“What, exactly, is sun-fuck yellow?”

“That. That is sun-fuck yellow. I’m getting a migraine just looking at that.”

“Hm, I’ll be sure to call into Benjamin Moore to tell them to rename this shade “sun-fuck yellow”. They’ll be really pleased.” 

“Good. And while they’re at it, can they design a paint colour that isn’t terrible?”

“You would think that the artist in the house would be the picky one, but _nooooo_. You know the baby isn’t going to care what colour we pick.” 

“Oh yes she will.”

“This again?”

“What?”

Rey smiles triumphantly and Ben huffs. She pushes the cart and he examines the paint swatches like they’re schematics for a space shuttle before suddenly snatching a few more out of the display like a magician grabbing a rabbit out of a hat. 

The colours he picks are all perfect. Of course they are, the jerk. 

“You’re convinced it’s going to be a girl. Ben, we literally just found out less than a month ago that I’m pregnant. There’s no way of knowing yet.”

“I have a good feeling about it.”

“Uh huh.”

“What about this one?”

He shows her a shade of light periwinkle and she stares at it for a moment before looking back up at him. 

“I love you, you know that?” She is smiling when she says it, hazel eyes light and cheeks pink. 

Ben grins at her, all crooked and boyish charm. 

“I know.”

*

It is one of those rare, clear days in December. The sun’s rays are strong enough to heat this part of the house, shining brilliant light into the kitchen. Ben is peeling potatoes and Rey is checking the temperature of the turkey with a fancy thermometer they just bought yesterday for the occasion. It will likely end up in the junk drawer, with about a hundred other cooking utensils they never use. 

Though, that all will soon change. 

There is no bump on Rey’s stomach - not yet. But she checks in the mirror every day anyway, waiting for the moment for their baby to start showing. 

When they first found out she was pregnant, they had both been terrified. Naturally. Children had never been a part of the plan, but now that she is… Ben is elated. She can see it in everything he does. He insists on singing and playing guitar for the baby, even though she keeps telling him it’s too early for that yet. 

“I want her to know my voice,” he told her just the other day. They were both naked, flushed and sweaty from sex, and he had laid his head on her chest, stroking her tummy with a wondering expression that made Rey have to hide loving smiles in his hair so he wouldn’t see. 

“This again?” she had said to him. 

“It’s a girl, Rey. I know it.”

She is starting to believe that too, though she knows there is absolutely no scientific data to back that instinct up. It’s a feeling. 

“Leia is bringing her apple pie right?” 

“She better be,” Ben grunts. “It’s the half the reason she gets invited here.”

Rey laughs distractedly and then stops to aim a serious look at him. “And you told her, right? Like she for sure, for sure knows about the baby.”

“She knows.” It’s the fifth time she has asked him this question, but she just wants to be extra certain. She would rather not have any unexpected surprises over dinner tonight. 

Rey goes to put the turkey back into the oven but Ben smoothly takes over. She sputters, slapping his arm with the oven mitt. “I’m not decrepit, you know. I can still do things.”

“I know you can.” He closes the oven door and then, without warning, sweeps Rey into his arms and lifts her in the air, so their faces are level. He kisses her, soft and lingering, and if they did not expect his mother to arrive - well - any minute now really, then that kiss might have turned into something more. 

They try not to do anything around Leia. She has never asked them not to, but… This is the part of their lives she is not a part of. They would both rather avoid the awkwardness because yes, from the outside this is a strange living situation, or lifestyle, or whatever anyone else might want to call it. 

But to Rey and Ben, they are two people, happily in love. And they don’t need to justify that to anyone. 

“I just want to do things for you. If that’s okay?” He is only asking as a formality because he knows she doesn’t truly mind and that if she did, she would have no qualms about telling him. Even now, after all these years, he still asks before he does things. 

_Can I help you carry the very large and heavy Christmas tree up the stairs?_

_Can I shovel the driveway, please?_

_Can I fuck your face, Rey? What about your ass?_

He still asks, and she still likes to make him break. To make him just _do it_ , take what he wants. Ravish her in all the ways they both like. 

“Of course,” she tells him in that low, demure way that makes his eyes darken in just the right way. She kisses him before he can do it, parting his lips with her tongue. One of his hands slides to her ass and she moans breathily into his mouth, tugging on his - 

A car honks outside. 

When they both laugh and Ben drops Rey back down to her feet, she privately thinks that it is every senior Organa’s duty to have comedic timing in her life. 

They open the front door, Rey shivering from the chill of outside, before Ben utters a wooden, “Oh shit.”

She does not have to ask him to clarify. 

For the first time in eight years, the passenger seat of Leia’s Audi is occupied. As the pair of them watch in stony shock, the small, shuffling figure of Rey’s father gets out of the car. Even from here, she can see those familiar green eyes and his perennial scowl. 

Ben reaches out without looking at her and grabs her hand. She squeezes it gratefully. 

*

Her father wrote her many notes over the years. They were short, no longer than a few sentences. Needled with tired guilt and weighed down by a twenty-dollar bill, more times than not. Petty bribes to keep the status quo. 

Before she left, before the great yawning silence engulfed their relationship the way it had been threatening to do long before she disappeared with Ben into The Falcon and never looked back, Rey decided to leave her father a letter of her own. 

Dad,

I know what you’re going to think. That I am doing this as some form of petty revenge against you, or that I am acting out like a kid. There isn’t much I can do to convince you otherwise on most things, so I am not going to bother to try with this. 

I don’t expect you to understand, or condone any of it. I don’t expect you to be happy either. By now, Ben has told Aunt Leia and even though I should have done the same for you, I just can’t. I know how that will go, the same way things always seem to go between us. So I’m just going to skip it, if it is all the same to you. 

I have loved Ben my entire life. It wasn’t always the way it is now, but that is what it has become. And it is what I want, dad. No one is making me doing anything I don’t want to do, so don’t blame Ben for this. This is just the way things are and I know that if I stay here, I will never be happy. Neither of us will be. 

I can’t stay in this house anymore. I can’t live the life you wanted for me. I have to find my own way and I know that’s scary for you, even if you would never admit to it. It’s scary for me too, but I know this is what I have to do. What Ben and I have to do, together. 

I just want you to know that I don’t hate you. I am not even mad at you. This is something I need to do for myself. We will be okay. 

I’ll write again soon. 

Love Rey.

*

She wrote again. And again. For years she wrote to him. 

And he never answered once. 

Rey thinks about her letter, that last piece of communication between daughter and father, as Ben and Leia sit in the kitchen to give them privacy. There are two steaming mugs of hot chocolate on the coffee table, though Rey wishes there was whiskey in at least hers. It is the first time since she learned of her pregnancy that she has wanted alcohol, but she doubts that it would do much anyway. 

Her father has barely looked her in the eye once. He looks around the living room, to the hand-carved pieces of furniture, to the framed photos she and Ben have taken over the years. To paintings she has made. Anywhere but at her. 

“Your aunt has one just like this.”

Rey nearly jumps in her skin and then she turns to see what Luke is looking at. He stares down at the coffee table, his expression utterly blank. 

“Um… yes. Ben made one for both of us last year.”

“He’s quite good.” Luke raises his eyebrows, his gaze still fixed on the table. 

Rey opens her mouth, closes it, and then nods concedingly. “Yep. He is.”

Then, silence again. Painful, agonizing, _harrowing_ silence.

Luke looks up at her, finally, and seems to be literally chewing on his tongue before he gestures to the table again. “He gets that from his father. Oh - I know,” he says like she is about to correct him on the issue, “they aren’t _technically_ blood, but Han was always good with his hands. Never touched carpentry but he was a hell of a mechanic.”

“Is that a shot?” Rey drops pretences and clasps her hands in her lap. 

Luke remains absolutely still; only his eyes move, looking directly at her now. 

“Are you trying to say that just because Ben is adopted-?”

“No. It’s not a shot, Rey.” Luke looks away from her again and she can see about a thousand emotions cross over his face. Mostly, though, he just looks exhausted. 

She knows the feeling. It’s been five minutes since they sat down together in her living room and already it feels like a lifetime has come and gone. 

“Alright.” She sounds as weary as she feels and she can see the way her tone affects her father. 

He slumps a little, his lips pursing in thought before he nods to himself. 

“I don’t understand it.” When she goes to speak, he waves at her, just as crotchety and ornery as ever. “Wait, would you? Just… let me say this. Okay?”

Apprehensive as ever, Rey subsides and nods at him to continue. 

Luke sighs and then turns to her more fully on the couch. He surprises her by reaching over and taking her hand in his.

She forgets how to breathe.

Her father has never done this before, not even when she was a little kid. Hugs were perfunctory and as rare as eclipses. Sometimes, she would get a pat on the shoulder if she did well on her grades. 

That was about it. 

But now… Luke holds her hand in his and she realizes how much older he has gotten. All the blond is gone now. He is completely grey and there are new lines on his face. 

And she warms to him, just a little. Just enough to listen, even though she is still pissed at him. 

“I’m not very good at this,” he tells her and when she huffs the smallest laugh, he gives her a sharp look with little behind it. “Alright, truth be told I'm fucking terrible at this parenting stuff. I was never any good at it. Your mother told me she was pregnant and I nearly fainted. It was her that kept me strong. Your mother and your aunt, too.”

Rey stares at him, rapt and a little fascinated, despite herself. He never talks about her mother, either. Never. 

“Then, she died and I just… I never got over it. I couldn’t get past it. And I had this little girl to raise and I - I fucked up, Rey. I’ve known that all along, but I couldn’t stand it when I started to realize that you knew it too.”

He talks a small, bracing breath, and she might have, definitely squeezed his hand a little.

He pauses and tilts his head with a sad, wondering smile that Rey has absolutely no idea what to do with.

“You look just like her, you know.”

“Dad…” Rey looks away from him, embarrassed and yes, dammit, about to cry. She blames the hormones, even if she knows better. 

“Rey.” She looks at him then because he is still her father at the end of the day, no matter what has happened. It doesn’t make it all go away but… She waits, wiping away a stray tear with her other hand. “When I came home from work that day and found your letter, I just sat there and cried.”

Now, she is going to get angry. She can feel it bubbling up inside her and her father must be able to sense it as well because he grasps on to her hand tighter. 

“I didn’t cry because of what you told me. I cried because I knew then that I had lost you. That it was my fault. I couldn’t bear to face it.” He shakes his head at himself with vague disgust. “I should have answered your other letters. I should have picked up the phone, or just come out to see you, but I couldn’t. Look, I can’t begin to understand what it is you two have here. You’ve always been close and… I don’t understand it. I am not sure I ever will, but that doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It doesn’t?” Rey says incredulously, another tear falling down her face. “Dad, I haven’t seen or heard from you in over eight years.”

“I know,” he says quietly. “I know, Rey. I’m a coward and a drunken old fool. But when your aunt told me that you’re pregnant… I knew it was time to stop this bullshit.”

“Well, I haven’t forgiven you for anything,” Rey tells him, though in her head she adds _yet_. “Just because you’re here now doesn’t mean everything just goes away.”

“I know that too,” he says resolutely. “I’m not asking for forgiveness.”

“Then why are you here?” 

Luke smiles again and unless it is a trick of the light, she is fairly certain there is a gleam in his eyes as well. Another first, as far as she knows. 

“Let me be a better grandfather than I was a father. Please, Rey.” 

Rey stares at her father for a long time. The weight of the past is crushing - no one understands this better than she does - and all of a sudden, she just wants to let it go. Not forgive, not _yet,_ but maybe she can grant him this request. 

The truth is that she misses him, for all his faults. Misery has aged him exponentially and it will age her too, if she isn’t careful. Turning bones brittle and hearts shrunken. 

“Okay,” Rey says slowly, cautiously. “Let’s just… Why don’t we start with Christmas dinner and go from there.”

Luke nods and when a stray tear lights across his face, he laughs at himself and wipes it away. 

“Sounds good to me, kiddo.”

*

Ben and Rey are tidying the dishes, leaving Leia and Luke at the dinner table to chat. She is absolutely stuffed, and she can’t help but marvel over how easy dinner had been. There had been no comments, no dirty looks. Even when Ben leaned over to wipe a piece of turkey off Rey’s chin, all she had caught was a long look from her father before he stared down at his plate. 

“He seems different.”

Rey glances over her shoulder at her father and then shrugs. “Maybe.”

Ben wipes a plate off and nods to himself. “It’ll take some time but maybe things can be…”

“What? Normal?” Rey says with a light, mocking snort. 

She feels his arm go around her shoulder and then she is looking up before she can think not to, all her vulnerabilities laid bare on display. Ben peers down at her, that small half-smile fixed in place and she realizes then that he is a lot more like his mother then she previously thought. Carrying all the hope for both of them. 

Some of it must steal over to her because she smiles back at him. Just a little. 

“This family? Normal?” They both laugh quietly, so as not to attract their parents’ attention, only then Ben’s expression grows serious again. “Things will get better. For all of us, I think.”

“Hm, is this like your hunch about the baby being a girl?” 

He pinches her where the pinching is good and then leans in to kiss her temple. 

“Love you,” he murmurs into her hair. 

She closes her eyes and basks in the quiet warmth of his embrace, where she always feels safest and most treasured. Most loved. 

“...you too,” she whispers back to him. 

  
  


In the dining room, Luke and Leia glance over to their children. 

“It should be weird,” Luke remarks to his sister. She glances at him, measuring his expression, but for what she does not say. He looks thoughtful when he meets her gaze. Almost awed. 

“Maybe it should be,” Leia offers with a tiny shrug. “But it isn’t when you think about it. It’s like it always was.”

Luke says nothing to this, accepting his sister’s hand from across the table as they turn back to watch their children in peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone wanting to know:
> 
> Songs by Chapter:
> 
> Fake Empire - The National  
> Half of You - Cat Power  
> Fossa - Daughter  
> Age of Consent - New Order  
> Like a Friend - Pulp  
> Caring is Creepy - The Shins  
> Slow Show - The National  
> Heroin - The Velvet Underground  
> I Hold You - Clann  
> Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks - The National  
> Lover’s Spit - Broken Social Scene  
> Come To - Bombay Bicycle Club  
> Just Like Honey - The Jesus and Mary Chain


End file.
